Information-based centralization of locomotion in animals and robots

The centralization of locomotor control from weak and local coupling to strong and global is hard to assess outside of particular modeling frameworks. We developed an empirical, model-free measure of centralization that compares information between control signals and both global and local states. A...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2019-08, Vol.10 (1), p.3655-11, Article 3655
Main Authors: Neveln, Izaak D., Tirumalai, Amoolya, Sponberg, Simon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/378/2632/1664
631/553/1044
631/601/1332
639/166/988
9/10
Animals
Cockroaches
Cockroaches - physiology
Computer simulation
Coupling
Equipment Design
Humanities and Social Sciences
Hypotheses
Leg
Locomotion
Mechanical properties
Mechanics
multidisciplinary
Muscle, Skeletal - physiology
Muscles
Oscillators
Redundancy
Robot dynamics
Robotics
Robots
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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Summary:The centralization of locomotor control from weak and local coupling to strong and global is hard to assess outside of particular modeling frameworks. We developed an empirical, model-free measure of centralization that compares information between control signals and both global and local states. A second measure, co-information, quantifies the net redundancy in global and local control. We first validate that our measures predict centralization in simulations of phase-coupled oscillators. We then test how centralization changes with speed in freely running cockroaches. Surprisingly, across all speeds centralization is constant and muscle activity is more informative of the global kinematic state (the averages of all legs) than the local state of that muscle’s leg. Finally we use a legged robot to show that mechanical coupling alone can change the centralization of legged locomotion. The results of these systems span a design space of centralization and co-information for biological and robotic systems. Model-based centralization schemes, though able to quantify locomotion control in animals and bio-inspired robots, are limited to specific systems. Here, the authors report a generalized information-based centralization scheme that unifies existing models and can be applied to different systems.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-019-11613-y