Meeting Abstract
Navigating obstacles in terrestrial environments poses demands upon and animal’s stability, traction, and propulsion. Legged animals often clear relatively small obstacles by stepping over them. Alternatively, myriapods have low clearance and high surface contact via with dozens to hundreds of limb contacts points at once. A key to a millipede’s success at navigating uneven surfaces is its body and leg compliance. This study investigates the relative contributions of body and leg compliance of millipedes as they traverse steps and ramps. Preliminary analyses show that mean maximum body curvatures under the same conditions tend to remain consistent between multiple trials (dorsal 0.99 +/- 0.18 1/cm; ventral 1.45 +/- 0.30 1/cm) and that ventral pitch was higher than dorsal in 81% of trials. The coefficient of variation in dorsal and ventral curvature also tended to increase with increasing ramp angles and, on average, decrease with increasing step heights. This suggests that millipedes modulate their curvature under different conditions and may have optimal body postures when traversing obstacles. Future work will explore the passive and active mechanisms millipedes use to optimize this posture during locomotion using elastic beam theory, which could lend insight into optimal stiffness and compliance properties to create more stable and efficient terrestrial robots.
