Related papers: The two body problem: proprioception and motor con…
Artificial intelligence research to a great degree focuses on the brain and behaviors that the brain generates. But the brain, an extremely complex structure resulting from millions of years of evolution, can be viewed as a solution to…
Hippocampal neurons track positions of self, others, and gaze direction. However, it is unclear how their respective neural codes differ enough to avoid confusion while allowing for abstraction. We recorded from populations of hippocampal…
Cells undergo dramatic morphological changes during embryogenesis, yet how these changes affect the formation of ordered tissues remains elusive. Here, we show that a phase transition leading to the formation of a nematic liquid crystal…
Precopulatory courtship is a high-cost, non-well understood animal world mystery. Drosophila's (=D.'s) precopulatory courtship not only shows marked structural similarities with mammalian courtship, but also with human spoken language. This…
The extraordinary aerial agility of hummingbirds and insects continues to inspire the design of flapping-wing drones. To replicate and analyze such flight, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations that couple flow solvers with rigid…
Current theories suggest that adaptive decision-making necessitates the interaction between multiple decision-making systems. The computational definitions of different models of decision-making suggest interactions with task demands and…
Animal behavior reflects interactions between the nervous system, body, and environment. Therefore, biomechanics and environmental context must be considered to understand algorithms for behavioral control. Neuromechanical digital twins,…
We aim to build complex humanoid agents that integrate perception, motor control, and memory. In this work, we partly factor this problem into low-level motor control from proprioception and high-level coordination of the low-level skills…
Self/other distinction and self-recognition are important skills for interacting with the world, as it allows humans to differentiate own actions from others and be self-aware. However, only a selected group of animals, mainly high order…
The elucidation upon fly's neuronal patterns as a link to computer graphics and memory cards I/O's, is investigated for the phenomenon by propounding a unified theory of Einstein's two known relativities. It is conclusive that flies could…
I discuss the influence of adding the air resistance and the kinetic friction to the classical mechanics homework-problem: finding the motion of a body sliding down a hemispherical hill. For a physically realistic ($\propto v^2$) form of…
Understanding the rules underlying organismal development is a major unsolved problem in biology. Each cell in a developing organism responds to signals in its local environment by dividing, excreting, consuming, or reorganizing, yet how…
Learning to detect content-independent transformations from data is one of the central problems in biological and artificial intelligence. An example of such problem is unsupervised learning of a visual motion detector from pairs of…
Insects have tiny brains but complicated visual systems for motion perception. A handful of insect visual neurons have been computationally modeled and successfully applied for robotics. How different neurons collaborate on motion…
Dragonfly beats its wings independently, resulting in its superior maneuverability. Depending on the magnitude of phase difference between the fore- and hind-wings of dragonfly, the vortical structures and their interaction with wings…
Bristled and membranous insect wings have co-evolved despite apparently serving the same functionality. We emulate flight physics using an automated free-fall experiment to better understand how and why several distinct wing forms may have…
Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…
The wings of Lepidoptera contain a matrix of living cells whose function requires appropriate temperatures. However, given their small thermal capacity, wings can overheat rapidly in the sun. Here we analyze butterfly wings across a wide…
Organisms result from adaptive processes interacting across different time scales. One such interaction is that between development and evolution. Models have shown that development sweeps over several traits in a single agent, sometimes…
Biological and robotic grasp and manipulation are undeniably similar at the level of mechanical task performance. However, their underlying fundamental biological vs. engineering mechanisms are, by definition, dramatically different and can…