Meeting Abstract
The locomotor appendages of animals, from insect wings to tetrapod limbs, perform dual roles as sensors and propulsors, and sensory feedback has been shown to be critical to an animal’s motor performance. This symposium brings together researchers using novel techniques to study how different stimuli are encoded, how and where multimodal feedback is integrated, and how feedback modulates motor output in diverse modes of locomotion (aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial) in a diverse range of taxa (insects, fish, tetrapods), and in robots. Similar to the limbs of biological organisms, the limbs of robots can be equipped with integrated sensors and can rely on sensory feedback to adjust output signals. Engineers often look to biology for inspiration on how animals have evolved solutions to problems similar to those experienced in robotic movement. Similarly, biologists too must proactively engage with engineers to apply computer and robotic models to test hypotheses and help answer questions on the capacity and roles of sensory feedback in generating effective movement. Through a diverse group of researchers, including both biologists and engineers, this symposium will catalyze new interdisciplinary collaborations and identify future research directions for the development of bioinspired sensory control systems, as well as the use of robots to test hypotheses in neuromechanics.
