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Although typically possessing four limbs and short bodies, lizards have evolved a diversity of body plans, from short-bodied and fully-limbed to elongate and nearly limbless. Such diversity in body morphology is hypothesized as adaptations…
Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) illustrated remarkable behavioral plasticities including complex non-associative and associative learning representations. Understanding the principles of such mechanisms presumably leads to constructive…
Locomotion has seen dramatic progress for walking or running across challenging terrains. However, robotic quadrupeds are still far behind their biological counterparts, such as dogs, which display a variety of agile skills and can use the…
There is renewed interest in modeling and understanding the nervous system of the nematode $\textit{Caenorhabditis elegans}$ ($\textit{C. elegans}$), as this small model system provides a path to bridge the gap between nervous system…
Humanoid robots are made to resemble humans but their locomotion abilities are far from ours in terms of agility and versatility. When humans walk on complex terrains, or face external disturbances, they combine a set of strategies,…
Intelligent biological systems are characterized by their embodiment in a complex environment and the intimate interplay between their nervous systems and the nonlinear mechanical properties of their bodies. This coordination, in which the…
We propose an effective way to create interpretable control agents, by re-purposing the function of a biological neural circuit model, to govern simulated and real world reinforcement learning (RL) test-beds. We model the tap-withdrawal…
Sprawling locomotion in vertebrates, particularly salamanders, demonstrates how body undulation and spinal mobility enhance stability, maneuverability, and adaptability across complex terrains. While prior work has separately explored…
Dung beetles impressively coordinate their six legs simultaneously to effectively roll large dung balls. They are also capable of rolling dung balls varying in the weight on different terrains. The mechanisms underlying how their motor…
This paper addresses the challenge of terrain-adaptive dynamic locomotion in humanoid robots, a problem traditionally tackled by optimization-based methods or reinforcement learning (RL). Optimization-based methods, such as model-predictive…
The roundworm C. elegans exhibits robust escape behavior in response to rapidly rising temperature. The behavior lasts for a few seconds, shows history dependence, involves both sensory and motor systems, and is too complicated to model…
Soft robots require directional control to navigate complex terrains. However, achieving such control often requires multiple actuators, which increases mechanical complexity, complicates control systems, and raises energy consumption.…
Our goal in this work is to expand the theory and practice of robot locomotion by addressing critical challenges associated with the robotic biomimicry of bat aerial locomotion. Bats are known for their pronounced, fast wing articulations,…
Adaptive morphogenetic robots adapt their morphology and control policies to meet changing tasks and environmental conditions. Many such systems leverage soft components, which enable shape morphing but also introduce simulation and control…
In nature, limbless locomotion is adopted by a wide range of organisms at various length scales. Interestingly, undulatory, crawling and inching/looping gait constitutes a fundamental class of limbless locomotion and is often observed in…
The nervous system of the nematode soil worm Caenorhabditis elegans exhibits remarkable complexity despite the worm's small size. A general challenge is to better understand the relationship between neural organization and neural activity…
The exploration of intelligent machines has recently spurred the development of physical neural networks, a class of intelligent metamaterials capable of learning, whether in silico or in situ, from observed data. In this study, we…
Rapid advances in genetics, genomics, and imaging have given insight into the molecular and cellular basis of behaviour in a variety of model organisms with unprecedented detail and scope. It is increasingly routine to isolate behavioural…
Animals must integrate sensory cues with their current behavioral context to generate a suitable response. How this integration occurs is poorly understood. Previously we developed high throughput methods to probe neural activity in…
A motion-based control interface promises flexible robot operations in dangerous environments by combining user intuitions with the robot's motor capabilities. However, designing a motion interface for non-humanoid robots, such as…