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We study the properties of random walks on complex trees. We observe that the absence of loops reflects in physical observables showing large differences with respect to their looped counterparts. First, both the vertex discovery rate and…
The ability of animals to interact with complex dynamics is unmatched in robots. Especially important to the interaction performances is the online adaptation of body dynamics, which can be modeled as an impedance behaviour. However, the…
Hierarchical learning has been successful at learning generalizable locomotion skills on walking robots in a sample-efficient manner. However, the low-dimensional "latent" action used to communicate between two layers of the hierarchy is…
Collective movement can be achieved when individuals respond to the local movements and positions of their neighbours. Some individuals may disproportionately influence group movement if they occupy particular spatial positions in the…
This study explores the dynamics of asymmetrical bounding gaits in quadrupedal robots, focusing on the integration of torso pitching and hip motion to enhance speed and stability. Traditional control strategies often enforce a fixed…
Polymorphism in the peripheral sensory system (e.g., congenital individual differences in photopigment configuration) is important in diverse research fields, ranging from evolutionary biology to engineering, because of its potential…
As robots and other automated systems are introduced to unknown and dynamic environments, robust and adaptive control strategies are required to cope with disturbances, unmodeled dynamics and parametric uncertainties. In this paper, we…
Numerical models indicate that collective animal behaviour may emerge from simple local rules of interaction among the individuals. However, very little is known about the nature of such interaction, so that models and theories mostly rely…
Synthetic bio-molecular spiders with "legs" made of single-stranded segments of DNA can move on a surface covered by single-stranded segments of DNA called substrates when the substrate DNA is complementary to the leg DNA. If the motion of…
Understanding and even defining what constitutes animal interactions remains a challenging problem. Correlational tools may be inappropriate for detecting communication between a set of many agents exhibiting nonlinear behavior. A different…
Bipedal animals have diverse morphologies and advanced locomotion abilities. Terrestrial birds, in particular, display agile, efficient, and robust running motion, in which they exploit the interplay between the body segment masses and…
Many methods exist for a bipedal robot to keep its balance while walking. In addition to step size and timing, other strategies are possible that influence the stability of the robot without interfering with the target direction and speed…
Why do we move forward when we walk? Our legs undergo periodic motion and thus possess no net change in position; however, our bodies do possess a net change in position and we are propelled forward. From a geometric perspective, this…
An originally chaotic system can be controlled into various periodic dynamics. When it is implemented into a legged robot's locomotion control as a central pattern generator (CPG), sophisticated gait patterns arise so that the robot can…
In the last twenty years network science has proven its strength in modelling many real-world interacting systems as generic agents, the nodes, connected by pairwise edges. Yet, in many relevant cases, interactions are not pairwise but…
Organisms have evolved immune systems that can counter pathogenic threats. The adaptive immune system in vertebrates consists of a diverse repertoire of immune receptors that can dynamically reorganize to specifically target the…
Dynamic bipedal walking on discrete terrain, like stepping stones, is a challenging problem requiring feedback controllers to enforce safety-critical constraints. To enforce such constraints in real-world experiments, fast and accurate…
The humanoid robot iCub is a research platform of the Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), spread among different institutes around the world. In the most recent version of iCub, the robot is equipped with stronger legs and…
Neuromechanics aims to understand the link between an animal's neural activity and its physical behaviors. Recent advances in experimental and machine learning techniques enable simultaneous recordings of neural and locomotion dynamics over…
In this paper, previous works on the Model Predictive Control (MPC) and the Divergent Component of Motion (DCM) for bipedal walking control are extended. To this end, we employ a single MPC which uses a combination of Center of Pressure…