The IMA workshop on animal locomotion in June 1998 launched a
collaboration between biologist Robert Full, mathematicians John
Guckenheimer and Philip Holmes, and electrical engineer Daniel
Koditschek. Their project, which includes the development of
spectacular autonomous hexapod robots like the one pictured at right,
has been funded for several years by DARPA. In an invited 2006 SIAM
Review paper, Holmes, Full, Koditschek, and Guckenheimer describe the
initiation of the project: This paper, and some of our recent work
on which it draws, has its origins in a remarkable IMA workshop on gait
patterns and symmetry held in June 1998, that brought together
biologists, engineers and mathematicians... Workshop discussions in
which we all took part also inspired the creation of RHex, a six-legged
robot whose unprecedented mobility suggests that engineers can aspire
to achieving the capabilities of such fabulous runners as the humble
cockroach. In turn, since we know (more or less) their ingredients,
such robots can help us better understand the animals that inspired
them. Neurophysiologist John Miller joined them in their proposal
on "Neuromechanical Systems Biology: How exactly do animals move?",
which received a $5,000,000 FIBR award from the NSF in September 2004
to pursue a highly interdisciplinary approach to uncover the neural and
muscular control and feedback loops that govern the whole-body motion
of animals.
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