Decentralized control of insect walking: A simple neural network explains a wide range of behavioral and neurophysiological results.

ABSTRACT: Controlling the six legs of an insect walking in an unpredictable environment is a challenging task, as many degrees of freedom have to be coordinated. Solutions proposed to deal with this task are usually based on the highly influential concept that (sensory-modulated) central pattern generators (CPG) are required to control the rhythmic movements of walking legs. Here, we investigate a different view. To this end, we introduce a sensor based controller operating on artificial neurons, being applied to a (simulated) insectoid robot required to exploit the "loop through the world" allowing for simplification of neural computation. We show that such a decentralized solution leads to adaptive behavior when facing uncertain environments which we demonstrate for a broad range of behaviors neve

SUBMITTER: Schilling M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7205325 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature