Weak Actuators Generate Adaptive Animal Gaits without a Brain

This study shows some experiments to explain the physical aspect of the gait adjustment mechanism for quadrupeds in nature. The major contribution of this study was to show that 3D active walking with autonomous motion adjustment is possible without any explicit controller. Our robot can generate typical quadruped gaits and chooses a suitable one automatically with no sensor, no brain, no controller, only a purely physical mechanism. The key point of this approach is to exploit the weakness of a low-torque actuator. This passivity takes the function of a closed-loop controller and adjusts its own phases. This result leads a hypothesis: Animals may not use their brain to generate and choose a suitable gait, just like this robot. We envision this result will be a milestone to understand the amazing animal abilities.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/weak-brainless-quadruped-robot-autonomously-generates-gaits

My works:
http://ishikawa-lab.sakura.ne.jp/yoichi/

Relevant works:
http://oscillex.org/robots/
http://www.cmplx.riec.tohoku.ac.jp/jp/news/oscillex_newspaper/

Видео Weak Actuators Generate Adaptive Animal Gaits without a Brain канала Yoichi Masuda