A Natural Movement Database for Management, Documentation, Visualization, Mining and Modeling of Locomotion Experiments

Theunissen, Leslie M.; Hertrich, Michael; Wiljes, Cord; Zell, Eduard; Behler, Christian; Krause, André Frank; Bekemeier, Holger; Cimiano, Philipp; Botsch, Mario; Dürr, Volker

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-09435-9_27

Cited by 4 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…In a recent study, we have shown that a 'targeting mechanism' is part of the spatial coordination of legs in three-dimensional space in Carausius (Theunissen et al, 2014c). A preliminary look at the accuracy and precision of hind leg targeting towards the position of the middle leg in other species suggests that this mechanism works the same in climbing Aretaon and Medauroidea (Theunissen et al, 2014b). This may also explain the reduced proportion of short steps in hind legs, because improved targeting towards an appropriate foothold -as experienced and signalled by a leading leg -should reduce the necessity of corrective short steps.…”

Section: Use Of Thorax Anglesmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…In conjunction with the publication of a concept for an open access database comprising experimental data on natural motion in animals and humans (Theunissen et al, 2014b), a representative sample data set (comprising 36 trials, i.e. 12 per species) has been made available to the public on http://movement.cit-ec.de (Theunissen et al, 2014a).…”

Section: Behavioural Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To the best of our knowledge, we provide the first comparative study of whole-body kinematics of unrestrained insect locomotion. A representative subset of the data has been published (Theunissen et al, 2014a) as part of an initiative to establish an open-access natural locomotion database (Theunissen et al, 2014b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Comparative whole-body kinematics of closely related insect species with different body morphology

Theunissen

Bekemeier

Dürr

2014

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Legged locomotion through natural environments is very complex and variable. For example, leg kinematics may differ strongly between species, but even within the same species it is adaptive and context-dependent. Inter-species differences in locomotion are often difficult to interpret, because both morphological and ecological differences among species may be strong and, as a consequence, confound each other's effects. In order to understand better how body morphology affects legged locomotion, we compare unrestrained whole-body kinematics of three stick insect species with different body proportions, but similar feeding ecology: Carausius morosus, Aretaon asperrimus and Medauroidea extradentata (=Cuniculina impigra). In order to co-vary locomotory context, we introduced a gradually increasing demand for climbing by varying the height of stairs in the setup. The species were similar in many aspects, for example in using distinct classes of steps, with minor differences concerning the spread of corrective short steps. Major differences were related to antenna length, segment lengths of thorax and head, and the ratio of leg length to body length. Whereas all species continuously moved their antennae, only Medauroidea executed high swing movements with its front legs to search for obstacles in the near-range environment. Although all species adjusted their body inclination, the range in which body segments moved differed considerably, with longer thorax segments tending to be moved more. Finally, leg posture, time courses of leg joint angles and intra-leg coordination differed most strongly in long-legged Medauroidea.

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Section: Use Of Thorax Anglesmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Behavioural Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Comparative whole-body kinematics of closely related insect species with different body morphology

Theunissen

Bekemeier

Dürr

2014

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…In total, we analysed the following number of steps of intact animals: flat steps (middle legs: n=2579; hindlegs: N=3334); climbing steps (middle legs: n=176; hindlegs: n=393). Twelve trials used in this study have been made available in an open-access data publication (Theunissen et al, 2014a) as part of a collaborative project on improvement of availability and sharing of research data (Theunissen et al, 2014b). From the manipulated animals, we analysed spatial co-ordination before/after ablation: flat steps (n=534/1026) and climbing steps (n=106/220).…”

Section: Motion Capture and Reconstructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial coordination of foot contacts in unrestrained climbing insects

Theunissen

Vikram

Dürr

2014

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Animals that live in a spatially complex environment such as the canopy of a tree, constantly need to find reliable foothold in threedimensional (3D) space. In multi-legged animals, spatial co-ordination among legs is thought to improve efficiency of finding foothold by avoiding searching-movements in trailing legs. In stick insects, a 'targeting mechanism' has been described that guides foot-placement of hind-and middle legs according to the position of their leading ipsilateral leg. So far, this mechanism has been shown for standing and tethered walking animals on horizontal surfaces. Here, we investigate the efficiency of this mechanism in spatial limb coordination of unrestrained climbing animals. For this, we recorded whole-body kinematics of freely climbing stick insects and analysed foot placement in 3D space. We found that touch-down positions of adjacent legs were highly correlated in all three spatial dimensions, revealing 3D co-ordinate transfer among legs. Furthermore, targeting precision depended on the position of the leading leg. A second objective was to test the importance of sensory information transfer between legs. For this, we ablated a proprioceptive hair field signaling the levation of the leg. After ablation, the operated leg swung higher and performed unexpected searching movements. Furthermore, targeting of the ipsilateral trailing leg was less precise in anteroposterior and dorsoventral directions. Our results reveal that the targeting mechanism is used by unrestrained climbing stick insects in 3D space and that information from the trochanteral hair field is used in ipsilateral spatial co-ordination among legs.

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“…It is an established organism for studying the neural mechanisms and neuroethology of locomotion (Bässler, 1983 ; Cruse, 1990 ; Büschges, 2012 ; Dürr et al, 2018 ). In drawing from experimental samples of whole-body postures of C. morosus (Theunissen et al, 2014a , b ), we generate simplified multi-cylinder models of instant 3D postures, including 22 annotated 3D coordinates of leg, head and thorax joints. Each posture could be transformed by an arbitrary combination of rotation, translation, and scaling.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marker-Less Motion Capture of Insect Locomotion With Deep Neural Networks Pre-trained on Synthetic Videos

Arent

Schmidt

Botsch

et al. 2021

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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Motion capture of unrestrained moving animals is a major analytic tool in neuroethology and behavioral physiology. At present, several motion capture methodologies have been developed, all of which have particular limitations regarding experimental application. Whereas marker-based motion capture systems are very robust and easily adjusted to suit different setups, tracked species, or body parts, they cannot be applied in experimental situations where markers obstruct the natural behavior (e.g., when tracking delicate, elastic, and/or sensitive body structures). On the other hand, marker-less motion capture systems typically require setup- and animal-specific adjustments, for example by means of tailored image processing, decision heuristics, and/or machine learning of specific sample data. Among the latter, deep-learning approaches have become very popular because of their applicability to virtually any sample of video data. Nevertheless, concise evaluation of their training requirements has rarely been done, particularly with regard to the transfer of trained networks from one application to another. To address this issue, the present study uses insect locomotion as a showcase example for systematic evaluation of variation and augmentation of the training data. For that, we use artificially generated video sequences with known combinations of observed, real animal postures and randomized body position, orientation, and size. Moreover, we evaluate the generalization ability of networks that have been pre-trained on synthetic videos to video recordings of real walking insects, and estimate the benefit in terms of reduced requirement for manual annotation. We show that tracking performance is affected only little by scaling factors ranging from 0.5 to 1.5. As expected from convolutional networks, the translation of the animal has no effect. On the other hand, we show that sufficient variation of rotation in the training data is essential for performance, and make concise suggestions about how much variation is required. Our results on transfer from synthetic to real videos show that pre-training reduces the amount of necessary manual annotation by about 50%.

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A Natural Movement Database for Management, Documentation, Visualization, Mining and Modeling of Locomotion Experiments

Cited by 4 publications

References 17 publications

Comparative whole-body kinematics of closely related insect species with different body morphology

Comparative whole-body kinematics of closely related insect species with different body morphology

Spatial coordination of foot contacts in unrestrained climbing insects

Marker-Less Motion Capture of Insect Locomotion With Deep Neural Networks Pre-trained on Synthetic Videos

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