Don't break a leg: Running birds from quail to ostrich prioritise leg safety and economy in uneven terrain

Cursorial ground birds are paragons of bipedal running that span a 500-fold mass range from quail to ostrich. Here we investigate the task-level control priorities of cursorial birds by analysing how they negotiate single-step obstacles that create a conflict between body stability (attenuating deviations in body motion) and consistent leg force–length dynamics (for economy and leg safety). We also test the hypothesis that control priorities shift between body stability and leg safety with increasing body size, reflecting use of active control to overcome size-related challenges. Weight-support demands lead to a shift towards straighter legs and stiffer steady gait with increasing body size, but it remains unknown whether non-steady locomotor priorities diverge with size. We found that all measured species used a consistent obstacle negotiation strategy, involving unsteady body dynamics to minimise fluctuations in leg posture and loading across multiple steps, not directly prioritising body stability. Peak leg forces remained remarkably consistent across obstacle terrain, within 0.35 body weights of level running for obstacle heights from 0.1 to 0.5 times leg length. All species used similar stance leg actuation patterns, involving asymmetric force–length trajectories and posture-dependent actuation to add or remove energy depending on landing conditions. We present a simple stance leg model that explains key features of avian bipedal locomotion, and suggests economy as a key priority on both level and uneven terrain. We suggest that running ground birds target the closely coupled priorities of economy and leg safety as the direct imperatives of control, with adequate stability achieved through appropriately tuned intrinsic dynamics

Bio-inspired swing leg control for spring-mass robots running on ground with unexpected height disturbance

We proposed three swing leg control policies for spring-mass running robots, inspired by experimental data from our recent collaborative work on ground running birds. Previous investigations suggest that animals may prioritize injury avoidance and/or efficiency as their objective function during running rather than maintaining limit-cycle stability. Therefore, in this study we targeted structural capacity (maximum leg force to avoid damage) and efficiency as the main goals for our control policies, since these objective functions are crucial to reduce motor size and structure weight. Each proposed policy controls the leg angle as a function of time during flight phase such that its objective function during the subsequent stance phase is regulated. The three objective functions that are regulated in the control policies are (i) the leg peak force, (ii) the axial impulse, and (iii) the leg actuator work. It should be noted that each control policy regulates one single objective function. Surprisingly, all three swing leg control policies result in nearly identical subsequent stance phase dynamics. This implies that the implementation of any of the proposed control policies would satisfy both goals (damage avoidance and efficiency) at once. Furthermore, all three control policies require a surprisingly simple leg angle adjustment: leg retraction with constant angular acceleration

Don't break a leg: Running birds from quail to ostrich prioritise leg safety and economy in uneven terrain

Cursorial ground birds are paragons of bipedal running that span a 500-fold mass range from quail to ostrich. Here we investigate the task-level control priorities of cursorial birds by analysing how they negotiate single-step obstacles that create a conflict between body stability (attenuating deviations in body motion) and consistent leg force–length dynamics (for economy and leg safety). We also test the hypothesis that control priorities shift between body stability and leg safety with increasing body size, reflecting use of active control to overcome size-related challenges. Weight-support demands lead to a shift towards straighter legs and stiffer steady gait with increasing body size, but it remains unknown whether non-steady locomotor priorities diverge with size. We found that all measured species used a consistent obstacle negotiation strategy, involving unsteady body dynamics to minimise fluctuations in leg posture and loading across multiple steps, not directly prioritising body stability. Peak leg forces remained remarkably consistent across obstacle terrain, within 0.35 body weights of level running for obstacle heights from 0.1 to 0.5 times leg length. All species used similar stance leg actuation patterns, involving asymmetric force–length trajectories and posture-dependent actuation to add or remove energy depending on landing conditions. We present a simple stance leg model that explains key features of avian bipedal locomotion, and suggests economy as a key priority on both level and uneven terrain. We suggest that running ground birds target the closely coupled priorities of economy and leg safety as the direct imperatives of control, with adequate stability achieved through appropriately tuned intrinsic dynamics

Understanding the agility of running birds: Sensorimotor and mechanical factors in avian bipedal locomotion

Birds are a diverse and agile lineage of vertebrates that all use bipedal locomotion for at least part of their life. Thus birds provide a valuable opportunity to investigate how biomechanics and sensorimotor control are integrated for agile bipedal locomotion. This review summarizes recent work using terrain perturbations to reveal neuromechanical control strategies used by ground birds to achieve robust, stable and agile running. Early experiments in running guinea fowl aimed to reveal the immediate intrinsic mechanical response to an unexpected drop ('pothole') in terrain. When navigating the pothole, guinea fowl experience large changes in leg posture in the perturbed step, which correlates strongly with leg loading and perturbation recovery. Analysis of simple theoretical models of running has further confirmed the crucial role of swing-leg trajectory control for regulating foot contact timing and leg loading in uneven terrain. Coupling between body and leg dynamics results in an inherent trade-off in swing leg retraction rate for fall avoidance versus injury avoidance. Fast leg retraction minimizes injury risk, but slow leg retraction minimizes fall risk. Subsequent experiments have investigated how birds optimize their control strategies depending on the type of perturbation (pothole, step, obstacle), visibility of terrain, and with ample practice negotiating terrain features. Birds use several control strategies consistently across terrain contexts: 1) independent control of leg angular cycling and leg length actuation, which facilitates dynamic stability through simple control mechanisms, 2) feedforward regulation of leg cycling rate, which tunes foot-contact timing to maintain consistent leg loading in uneven terrain (minimizing fall and injury risks), 3) load-dependent muscle actuation, which rapidly adjusts stance push-off and stabilizes body mechanical energy, and 4) multi-step recovery strategies that allow body dynamics to transiently vary while tightly regulating leg loading to minimize risks of fall and injury. In future work, it will be interesting to investigate the learning and adaptation processes that allow animals to adjust neuromechanical control mechanisms over short and long timescales

Effective Viscous Damping Enables Morphological Computation in Legged Locomotion

Muscle models and animal observations suggest that physical damping is beneficial for stabilization. Still, only a few implementations of mechanical damping exist in compliant robotic legged locomotion. It remains unclear how physical damping can be exploited for locomotion tasks, while its advantages as sensor-free, adaptive force- and negative work-producing actuators are promising. In a simplified numerical leg model, we studied the energy dissipation from viscous and Coulomb damping during vertical drops with ground-level perturbations. A parallel spring-damper is engaged between touch-down and mid-stance, and its damper auto-disengages during mid-stance and takeoff. Our simulations indicate that an adjustable and viscous damper is desired. In hardware we explored effective viscous damping and adjustability and quantified the dissipated energy. We tested two mechanical, leg-mounted damping mechanisms; a commercial hydraulic damper, and a custom-made pneumatic damper. The pneumatic damper exploits a rolling diaphragm with an adjustable orifice, minimizing Coulomb damping effects while permitting adjustable resistance. Experimental results show that the leg-mounted, hydraulic damper exhibits the most effective viscous damping. Adjusting the orifice setting did not result in substantial changes of dissipated energy per drop, unlike adjusting damping parameters in the numerical model. Consequently, we also emphasize the importance of characterizing physical dampers during real legged impacts to evaluate their effectiveness for compliant legged locomotion