A ROBOT that can both walk and swim has been simulated in California.
Understanding the complex behaviour involved in switching from trotting to
swimming could lead to a new generation of amphibious robots, say
researchers.
Auke Ijspeert and Michael Arbib of the Brain Simulation Laboratory at the
University of Southern California in Los Angeles wanted to investigate how
behaviour emerges from simple signals in a creature’s central nervous system. So
they built a computer simulation of a salamander’s central nervous system, and
superimposed it on a computer animation.
The resulting “salamander” exists in a simulated world of flat ground and…
