Creating and modulating rhythms by controlling the physics of the body

The motion behaviors of vertebrates require the correct coordination of the muscles and of the body limbs even for the most stereotyped ones like the rhythmical patterns. It means that the neural circuits have to share some part of the control with the material properties and the body morphology in order to rise any of these motor synergies. To this respect, the chemical downward neuromodulators that supervise the pattern generators in the spinal cord create the conditions to merge (or to disrupt) them by matching the phase of the neural controllers to the body dynamics. In this paper, we replicate this control based on phase synchronization to implement neuromodulators and investigate the interplay between control, morphology and material. We employ this mechanism to control three robotic setups of gradual complexity and actuated by McKibben type air muscles: a single air muscle, an elbow-like system and a leg-like articulation. We show that for specific values, the control parameters modulate the internal dynamics to match those of the body and of the material physics to either the rhythmical and non-rhythmical gait patterns.

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