Walking with Salamanders: From Molecules to Biorobotics

From lampreys to salamanders evolving neural controllers for swimming and walking

This paper presents how neural swimming controllers for a lamprey can be adapted for controlling both the swimming and the walking of a salamander like an imat Using a Genetic Algorithm GA we extend a connectionist model of the biological Central Pat tern Generator CPG controlling the swimming of a lamprey Ekeberg to control the locomotion of a D mechanical simulation of a salamander We rst sum...

From Passive Dynamic Walking to Passive Turning of Biped walker

Dynamically stable biped robots mimicking human locomotion have received significant attention over the last few decades. Formerly, the existence of stable periodic gaits for straight walking of passive biped walkers was well known and investigated as the notion of passive dynamic walking. This study is aimed to elaborate this notion in the case of three dimensional (3D) walking and extend it f...

Biorobotics for Longevity

The main aim of this paper is to illustrate the potentials that the use of robotic and mechatronic technologies (in combination with advanced biomechanical models) can offer to help elderly people identifying and slowing down the effects of the age-related modifications of the neuro-muscoloskeletal systems and therefore increasing their possibility of staying at home reducing the hospetalizatio...

The Biorobotics and Locomotion Lab

From Walking to Running

The implementation of bipedal gaits in legged robots is still a challenge in state-of-the-art engineering. Human gaits could be realized by imitating human leg dynamics where a spring-like leg behavior is found as represented in the bipedal spring-mass model. In this study we explore the gap between walking and running by investigating periodic gait patterns. We found an almost continuous morph...