The Penn Jerboa: A Platform for Exploring Parallel Composition of Templates

We have built a 12DOF, passive-compliant legged, tailed biped actuated by four brushless DC motors. We anticipate that this machine will achieve varied modes of quasistatic and dynamic balance, enabling a broad range of locomotion tasks including sitting, standing, walking, hopping, running, turning, leaping, and more. Achieving this diversity of behavior with a single under-actuated body, requires a correspondingly diverse array of controllers, motivating our interest in compositional techniques that promote mixing and reuse of a relatively few base constituents to achieve a combinatorially growing array of available choices. Here we report on the development of one important example of such a behavioral programming method, the construction of a novel monopedal sagittal plane hopping gait through parallel composition of four decoupled 1DOF base controllers. For this example behavior, the legs are locked in phase and the body is fastened to a boom to restrict motion to the sagittal plane. The platform's locomotion is powered by the hip motor that adjusts leg touchdown angle in flight and balance in stance, along with a tail motor that adjusts body shape in flight and drives energy into the passive leg shank spring during stance. The motor control signals arise from the application in parallel of four simple, completely decoupled 1DOF feedback laws that provably stabilize in isolation four corresponding 1DOF abstract reference plants. Each of these abstract 1DOF closed loop dynamics represents some simple but crucial specific component of the locomotion task at hand. We present a partial proof of correctness for this parallel composition of template reference systems along with data from the physical platform suggesting these templates are anchored as evidenced by the correspondence of their characteristic motions with a suitably transformed image of traces from the physical platform.Comment: Technical Report to Accompany: A. De and D. Koditschek, "Parallel composition of templates for tail-energized planar hopping," in 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 2015. v2: Used plain latex article, correct gap radius and specific force/torque number

Tuning gastropod locomotion: Modeling the influence of mucus rheology on the cost of crawling

Common gastropods such as snails crawl on a solid substrate by propagating muscular waves of shear stress on a viscoelastic mucus. Producing the mucus accounts for the largest component in the gastropod's energy budget, more than twenty times the amount of mechanical work used in crawling. Using a simple mechanical model, we show that the shear-thinning properties of the mucus favor a decrease in the amount of mucus necessary for crawling, thereby decreasing the overall energetic cost of locomotion.Comment: Corrected typo

Preliminary Investigation of the Frictional Response of Reptilian Shed Skin

Developing deterministic surfaces relies on controlling the structure of the rubbing interface so that not only the surface is of optimized topography, but also is able to self-adjust its tribological behaviour according to the evolution of sliding conditions. In seeking inspirations for such designs, many engineers are turning toward the biological world to correlate surface structure to functional behavior of bio-analogues. From a tribological point of view, squamate reptiles offer diverse examples where surface texturing, submicron and nano-scale features, achieve frictional regulation. In this paper, we study the frictional response of shed skin obtained from a snake (Python regius). The study employed a specially designed tribo-acoustic probe capable of measuring the coefficient of friction and detecting the acoustical behavior of the skin in vivo. The results confirm the anisotropy of the frictional response of snakes. The coefficient of friction depends on the direction of sliding: the value in forward motion is lower than that in the backward direction. In addition it is shown that the anisotropy of the frictional response may stem from profile asymmetry of the individual fibril structures present within the ventral scales of the reptil

Comparison between dual-purpose and specialized dairy cattle in pasture-based systems: change in body condition, locomotion score and cleanliness from summer to winter season

This study is an exploratory research comparing the changes of body condition score, locomotion score and cleanliness score between pasture and indoor season in purebred Dutch Friesian, 75% Dutch Friesian, 50% Dutch Friesian, Holstein Bakels and Brown Swiss dairy cattle. The dual-purpose cows were expected to cope better with a change in season and harsher environmental conditions compared to specialized dairy cows. Therefore it was expected that the body condition of the dual-purpose cows would be closer to the optimum or even higher and would barely change over season. The specialized dairy cows were expected to cope less well on pastures and during a change of season, with a body condition under the optimum, higher prevalence of lameness and more dirt on the skin, compared to the dual-purpose breeds. Twenty-seven Holstein Bakels cows represented the specialized dairy breed in this study. The dual-purpose cows were represented by fifteen Brown Swiss cows and fifty-two purebred and crossbred Dutch Friesian cows. The Holstein Bakels and Brown Swiss cows were kept at a Polish bio-dynamic farm with an open barn housing concept and a low concentrate feed diet. The purebred and crossbred Dutch Friesian cows were housed at one organic and one conventional farm at different locations in the Netherlands. Body condition score was the highest (just above optimal) for the Dutch Friesian cattle compared to all other breeds and the Holstein Bakels and Brown Swiss breed scored the lowest (under the optimal score). A negative correlation between body condition and locomotion score, as well as a positive correlation between body condition and hygiene score was found. This shows that skinny individuals are more prone to lameness, but not necessarily dirtier. Severely fat individuals show less incidences of lameness, however they are more often covered with dirt. Milk yield was the highest for 50% Dutch Friesian, followed by 75% Dutch Friesian and Dutch Friesian, probably due to the amount of Holstein Friesian genes. The Holstein Bakels and Brown Swiss breed underperformed for milk yield. This shows that the dual-purpose breed Dutch Friesian can cope better with harsher environmental conditions of pasture based systems than more specialised dairy breeds like the Holstein Bakels. Furthermore, the Brown Swiss breed could be considered more as a specialized dairy breed than a dual purpose breed. Change over season might be more dependent on housing, feed quality and quantity and management than genotype

Summing the strokes: energy economy in northern elephant seals during large-scale foraging migrations.

BackgroundThe energy requirements of free-ranging marine mammals are challenging to measure due to cryptic and far-ranging feeding habits, but are important to quantify given the potential impacts of high-level predators on ecosystems. Given their large body size and carnivorous lifestyle, we would predict that northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) have elevated field metabolic rates (FMRs) that require high prey intake rates, especially during pregnancy. Disturbance associated with climate change or human activity is predicted to further elevate energy requirements due to an increase in locomotor costs required to accommodate a reduction in prey or time available to forage. In this study, we determined the FMRs, total energy requirements, and energy budgets of adult, female northern elephant seals. We also examined the impact of increased locomotor costs on foraging success in this species.ResultsBody size, time spent at sea and reproductive status strongly influenced FMR. During the short foraging migration, FMR averaged 90.1 (SE = 1.7) kJ kg(-1)d(-1) - only 36 % greater than predicted basal metabolic rate. During the long migration, when seals were pregnant, FMRs averaged 69.4 (±3.0) kJ kg(-1)d(-1) - values approaching those predicted to be necessary to support basal metabolism in mammals of this size. Low FMRs in pregnant seals were driven by hypometabolism coupled with a positive feedback loop between improving body condition and reduced flipper stroking frequency. In contrast, three additional seals carrying large, non-streamlined instrumentation saw a four-fold increase in energy partitioned toward locomotion, resulting in elevated FMRs and only half the mass gain of normally-swimming study animals.ConclusionsThese results highlight the importance of keeping locomotion costs low for successful foraging in this species. In preparation for lactation and two fasting periods with high demands on energy reserves, migrating elephant seals utilize an economical foraging strategy whereby energy savings from reduced locomotion costs are shuttled towards somatic growth and fetal gestation. Remarkably, the energy requirements of this species, particularly during pregnancy, are 70-80 % lower than expected for mammalian carnivores, approaching or even falling below values predicted to be necessary to support basal metabolism in mammals of this size