COORDINATION OF MANY OSCILLATORS AND GENERATION OF LOCOMOTORY PATTERNS

This paper considers a synthesis approach to a decentralized autonomous system in which the functional order of the entire system is generated by cooperative interaction among its subsystems, each of which has the autonomy to control a part of the state of the system, and its application to pattern generators of animal locomotion. First, biological locomotory rhythms and their generators, swimming patterns of aquatic animals and gait patterns of quadrupeds, are reviewed briefly. Then, a design principle for autonomous coordination of many oscillators is proposed. Using these results, we synthesize a swimming pattern generator and a gait pattern generator. Finally, it is shown using computer simulations that the proposed systems generate desirable patterns. © 1990 Springer-Verlag.