Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba-Ward, Sendai, 980-8577, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2019 Feb 26;9(1):2848. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-39862-3.
The sea roach is an isopod with 14 legs; owing to its many degrees of freedom and coordination thereof, it can walk rapidly on rough terrain. Although there likely exists a remarkable decentralized control mechanism that facilitates fast and adaptive locomotion of sea roaches, it still remains elusive. To address this issue, we performed behavioural experiments and revealed that sea roaches often change their gait patterns depending on the locomotion speed. We suggest that the bending of the body trunk in the pitch direction is essential for the gait transitions, and we propose a decentralized control mechanism for body-limb coordination. We demonstrate this with a sea-roach-like robot whose gait transition is achieved by the proposed mechanism. This mechanism has some points in common with control mechanisms proposed for other legged animals. Thus, our findings will help unveil the common principle of legged locomotion and aid the design of multi-legged robots that move like animals.
海蟑螂是一种有 14 条腿的等足目动物；由于其具有多个自由度及其协调运动的能力，它可以在崎岖的地形上快速行走。尽管可能存在一个显著的分散控制机制，使海蟑螂能够快速适应的运动，但它仍然难以捉摸。为了解决这个问题，我们进行了行为实验，揭示出海蟑螂通常会根据运动速度改变它们的步态模式。我们提出，身体躯干在俯仰方向的弯曲对于步态转换是至关重要的，并且我们提出了一种用于身体-附肢协调的分散控制机制。我们使用一种类似于海蟑螂的机器人来证明这一点，其步态转换是通过所提出的机制实现的。该机制与为其他有腿动物提出的控制机制有一些共同点。因此，我们的发现将有助于揭示有腿动物运动的共同原理，并有助于设计出能够像动物一样运动的多足机器人。
