About
38
Publications
3,740
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
163
Citations
Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Current institution
Publications
Publications (38)
Quadrupeds exhibit surprisingly adaptive and agile locomotion under real world constraints. This ability is achieved by orchestrating many degrees of freedom in their bodies in real time. However, the control principle underlying this ability still remains elusive. In order to clarify the control principle, in this study, we focus on sprawling loco...
Insects and myriapods exhibit versatile walking patterns by coordinating their body and legs. Although some walking patterns are used only by specific species, it is interesting that they share similar gaits such as the tetrapod gait and direct wave gait. Taking this commonality into consideration, we have hypothesized the existence of common contr...
Quadrupeds exhibit diverse gait patterns depending on their locomotion speed. It is believed that they select the optimal gait pattern for energy efficiency. It has been suggested that changes in whole–body movement occur during gait transitions. Elucidating this intricate mechanism inherent in gait generation is expected to contribute to the field...
Robot controllers are often optimised for a single robot in a single environment. This approach proves brittle, as such a controller will often fail to produce sensible behavior for a new morphology or environment. In comparison, animal gaits are robust and versatile. By observing animals, and attempting to extract general principles of locomotion...
Many invertebrates are ideal model systems on which to base robot design principles due to their success in solving seemingly complex tasks across domains while possessing smaller nervous systems than vertebrates. Three areas are particularly relevant for robot designers: Research on flying and crawling invertebrates has inspired new materials and...
Myriapods exhibit various locomotor patterns depending on their species or situation while walking. Some species walk by direct wave gait, whereas other species walk by retrograde wave gait. Furthermore, some species employ body undulation as well during retrograde wave gait for fast walking. Our research group hypothesizes that there is a common c...
Myriapods exhibit diverse locomotor patterns depending on species and situation (e.g., speed, environmental media). However, the mechanism underlying these phenomena still remains largely elusive. To tackle this problem, we postulated that an inter-species control principle underlies various types of myriapod locomotion. We have recently proposed a...
Soft-bodied legged robot shows high adaptability to the environment by utilizing its flexible body mechanics. However, it is difficult to generate adaptive coordination patterns between limbs (i.e., interlimb coordination), and decentralized control could be a solution for this problem. To develop such control mechanism, we focused on wandering spi...
Multi-legged animals such as myriapods exhibit highly adaptive and effective locomotion on rough terrain. They achieve this locomotor performance by coordinating their flexible bodies and legs in response to the environmental situation. To capture the essential motor control mechanisms in centipedes, we have constructed mathematical models based on...
Multi-legged animals such as myriapods can locomote on unstructured rough terrain using their flexible bodies and legs. This highly adaptive locomotion emerges through the dynamic interactions between an animal’s nervous system, its flexible body, and the environment. Previous studies have primarily focused on either adaptive leg control or the pas...
Autonomous decentralized control could be the key to design soft-bodied robots that have a huge number of degrees of freedom. To address this issue, we focus on a wandering spider with a hydrostatic skeleton and aim to understand the decentralized control mechanism underlying their coordination pattern between limbs (i.e., interlimb coordination)....
Understanding control mechanisms underlying adaptive animal locomotion will provide us a design scheme for robots which can behave autonomously depending on environments. To address this issue, it is important to capture the interplay between local pattern generating circuits, descending commands from higher centers, and sensory feedback. However,...
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...
In this study, we fabricated a novel wearable vibration sensor for insects and measured their wing flapping. An analysis of insect wing deformation in relation to changes in the environment plays an important role in understanding the underlying mechanism enabling insects to dynamically interact with their surrounding environment. It is common to u...
As of July 2020, COVID-19 caused by SARS-COV-2 is spreading worldwide, causing severe economic damage. While minimizing human contact is effective in managing outbreaks, it causes severe economic losses. Strategies to solve this dilemma by considering the interrelation between the spread of the virus and economic activities are urgently needed to m...
Centipedes can move adaptively in unstructured environments by coordinating a large number of legs. Clarifying the underlying control mechanism for walking will help not only contribute to biology but also develop highly adaptive multi-legged robots. We previously observed the centipedes’ response to the removal of a part of the terrain during walk...
Polychaetes have a number of body segments with a pair of parapodia. They locomote effectively by utilizing undulatory and peristaltic motions of the flexible body in response to the environment. Clarifying the control mechanism underlying such adaptive locomotion of polychaetes can contribute to developing multi-legged robots that can move effecti...
As of July, 2020, acute respiratory syndrome caused by coronavirus COVID-19 is spreading over the world and causing severe economic damages. While minimizing human contact is effective in managing the outbreak, it causes severe economic losses. Strategies solving this dilemma by considering interrelation between the spread of the virus and economic...
Myriapod walking is achieved by propagating leg density waves along the body axis, and the leg density wave is classified as direct wave or retrograde wave compared to the direction of body movement. It is known that the direction of leg density waves differs according to the species, but the determining factor for such a difference is not understo...
Insects can walk in unstructured environments such as trees and rocks by changing foot trajectory and coordination pattern between limbs (i.e., interlimb coordination). Although we previously proposed a simple decentralized control scheme using local feedback based on ground reaction force, the control mechanism underlying adaptive foot trajectory...
Polychaetes have a number of body segments with a pair of parapodia. They walk and swim effectively by coordinating motion of parapodia and undulation of the flexible body. Clarifying the control mechanism underlying coordination between parapodia and body, we can not only provide new insights to biology but also contribute to developing multi-legg...
Amphibious animals adapt their body coordination to compensate for changing substrate properties as they transition between terrestrial and aquatic environments. Using behavioural experiments and mathematical modelling of the amphibious centipede Scolopendra subspinipes mutilans, we reveal an interplay between descending command (brain), local patt...
Centipedes(Scolopendridae) with a large number of legs and segments can move effectively by combining legged motion and body undulation. Clarifying the underlying control mechanism will help not only to contribute to biology but also to develop highly adaptive bio-inspired robots. However, a decentralized control mechanism that coordinates the cent...
Many species such as eels, lampreys and leeches generate undulatory swimming locomotion adaptively. It is said that this coordinated locomotive patterns are produced by central pattern generators (CPGs) which generate rhythmic activities without any rhythmic inputs. Additionally, there are some local sensors underlying in their bodies (e.g. lamprey...
Animals exhibit versatile locomotion patterns in response to the environment. To understand the underlying decentralized control mechanism, this study focuses on centipedes which exhibit highly versatile locomotion patterns. It is known that centipedes move by using their legs and body undulation. In addition to this, we report here that centipedes...
Legged animals exhibit adaptive and resilient locomotion through interlimb coordination. The long-term goal of this study is to clarify the relationship between the number of legs and the inherent decentralized control mechanism for interlimb coordination. As a preliminary step, the study focuses on millipedes as they represent the species with the...
Recently, myriapods have attracted the attention of engineers because mobile robots that mimic them potentially have the capability of producing highly stable, adaptive, and resilient behaviors. The major challenge here is to develop a control scheme that can coordinate their numerous legs in real time, and an autonomous decentralized control could...
Model for Interaction between the Legs and Ground.
(PDF)
Centipede locomotion on terrain with a gap.
(MP4)
Leg-amputated myriapod robot locomotion in the simulation.
(MP4)
Simulated myriapod robot locomotion on terrain with a gap.
(MP4)
Leg-amputated centipede’s locomotion.
(MP4)
Legged animals exhibit adaptive and resilient locomotion through their inter-limb coordination. Our long-term goal of this study is to develop a systematic design scheme for legged robots by elucidating the inter-limb coordination mechanism of various legged animals from a unified viewpoint. As a preliminary step towards this, we here focus on mill...
Centipedes exhibit adaptive locomotion via coordination of their numerous legs. In this study, we aimed to clarify the inter-limb coordination mechanism by focusing on autonomous decentralized control. Based on our working hypothesis that physical interaction between legs via the body trunk plays an important role for the inter-limb coordination, w...
Autonomous decentralized control could be the key to design adaptive multi-legged robots that can function in unpredictable and unstructured environments. To address this issue, we focus on centipedes with a large number of legs and aim to understand the ingenious decentralized control mechanism underlying their highly adaptive locomotion. For this...
Legged animals exhibit adaptive and resilient locomotion through their inter-limb coordination. Our motivation is to elucidate the inter-limb coordination mechanism underlying various legged animals from a unified viewpoint. However, it still remains elusive because the locomotion mechanism of multi-legged animals has not been well studied. To addr...
