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Insects exhibit remarkable cognitive skills in the field and several cognitive abilities have been demonstrated in Drosophila in the laboratory. By devising an ethologically relevant experimental setup that also allows comparison of…
Most animals possess the ability to actuate a vast diversity of movements, ostensibly constrained only by morphology and physics. In practice, however, a frequent assumption in behavioral science is that most of an animal's activities can…
Quadruped animals seamlessly transition between gaits as they change locomotion speeds. While the most widely accepted explanation for gait transitions is energy efficiency, there is no clear consensus on the determining factor, nor on the…
Animals possess a remarkable ability to navigate challenging terrains, achieved through the interplay of various pathways between the brain, central pattern generators (CPGs) in the spinal cord, and musculoskeletal system. Traditional…
Optimization of energy cost determines average values of spatio-temporal gait parameters such as step duration, step length or step speed. However, during walking, humans need to adapt these parameters at every step to respond to exogenous…
Everyday locomotion is a complex sensorimotor process that can unfold over multiple timescales, from long-term path planning to rapid, reactive adjustments. However, we lack an understanding of how factors such as environmental demands, or…
In order to keep their cohesiveness during locomotion gregarious animals must make collective decisions. Many species boast complex societies with multiple levels of communities. A common case is when two dominant levels exist, one…
An ongoing challenge in the mathematical modeling of biological aggregations is to strengthen the connection between models and biological data by quantifying the rules that individuals follow. We model aggregation of the pea aphid,…
Summary: Walking is regulated through the motorcontrol system (MCS). The MCS consists of a network of neurons from the central nervous system (CNS) and the intraspinal nervous system (INS), which is capable of producing a syncopated output.…
Background: Recent research in animal behaviour has contributed to determine how alignment, turning responses, and changes of speed mediate flocking and schooling interactions in different animal species. Here, we address specifically the…
We use immobility as an origin and reference for the measurement of locomotor behavior; speed, the direction of walking and the direction of facing as the three degrees of freedom shaping fly locomotor behavior, and cocaine as the parameter…
Studies of social and group behavior in interacting organisms require high-throughput analysis of the motion of a large number of individual subjects. Computer vision techniques offer solutions to specific tracking problems, and allow…
Here we present the first method for tracking each leg of a fruit fly behaving spontaneously upon a trackball, in real time. Legs were tracked with infrared-fluorescent dye invisible to the fly, and compatible with two-photon microscopy and…
The measurement of information flows within moving animal groups has recently been a topic of considerable interest, and it has become clear that the individual(s) that drive collective movement may change over time, and that such…
Many biological phenomena such as locomotion, circadian cycles, and breathing are rhythmic in nature and can be modeled as rhythmic dynamical systems. Dynamical systems modeling often involves neglecting certain characteristics of a…
Step adjustment can improve the gait robustness of biped robots, however the adaptation of step timing is often neglected as it gives rise to non-convex problems when optimized over several footsteps. In this paper, we argue that it is not…
Animals that travel together in groups display a variety of fascinating motion patterns thought to be the result of delicate local interactions among group members. Although the most informative way of investigating and interpreting…
Small continuous sensory and mechanical perturbations have often been used to identify properties of the closed-loop neural control of posture and other systems that are approximately linear time invariant. Here we extend this approach to…
Handedness in humans - better performance using either the left or right hand - is personally familiar, moderately heritable, and regulated by many genes, including those involved in general body symmetry. But behavioral handedness, i.e.…
Traversing rough terrain requires dynamic bipeds to stabilize themselves through foot placement without stepping in unsafe areas. Planning these footsteps online is challenging given non-convexity of the safe terrain, and imperfect…