Meeting Abstract
Embodiment theory for mobile agents proposes that the behavior of animals is controlled, in part, by morphological computation, the physical interaction of the body and the environment. How might this non-neural control system operate to adjust to changing mechanical loads? We propose that for rhythmic or transient behaviors, such as cruising and escaping in fish, functionally important changes in the mechanical properties of a structure can and do occur within a single cycle. The framework of non-linear viscoelasticity (NLV) provides both the analytical methods and the functional models for understanding these changes. We modified Ewoldt’s Large Amplitude Oscillatory Shear approach, originally created for rheology, to work with structural systems in bending. We bend vertebral columns of sharks, identify non-linear features as harmonics of fundamental properties, and model a frequency-curvature space that proposes alternating spring and brake functions for the structure within a single tailbeat.
