Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : June 06, 2021 - June 08, 2021
Myriapods such as centipedes and millipedes can coordinate their elongate multi-legged body to locomote adaptively in unstructured and unpredictably changing environments. Clarifying the underlying motor control mechanism for locomotion will help to realize multi-legged robots that can move adaptively in various environments. However, the interlimb coordination mechanism that can generate load-dependent adaptive gait inherent in myriapods has not yet been elucidated. To solve this problem, we focused on the dynamic muscle properties as actuators for walking which may be closely related to the generation of gait patterns. In this paper, we observed the response to the load on the body and found that centipedes change their gait and increase their duty cycle. To understand this behavioral finding, we proposed a mathematical model for the locomotion control in which the force-velocity relationship of leg muscles was taken into account.
