Meeting Abstract
Most animals walking on land are not bipeds like us, nor are they quadrupeds like our close land-vertebrate relatives — they have six or more legs, and usually move with three or more legs in contact with the ground at any time. Some new experimental results from robots and theoretical insights from mechanics suggest that such animals, even if they are running quickly and have sliding contacts, are moving in a regime akin to low Reynolds number swimming, and are in the “principal kinematic case” of geometric mechanics. I will present both empirical results and theoretical motivation in support of the claim that moving with more legs is fundamentally different, and in many ways simpler to control and analyze.
