Neurodynamic modeling of the fruit flyDrosophila melanogaster

Abstract

This manuscript describes neuromechanical modeling of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster in the form of a hexapod robot, Drosophibot, and an accompanying dynamic simulation. Drosophibot is a testbed for real-time dynamical neural controllers modeled after the anatomy and function of the insect nervous system. As such, Drosophibot has been designed to capture features of the animal's biomechanics in order to better test the neural controllers. These features include: dynamically scaling the robot to match the fruit fly by designing its joint elasticity and movement speed; a biomimetic actuator control scheme that converts neural activity into motion in the same way as observed in insects; biomimetic sensing, including proprioception from all leg joints and strain sensing from all leg segments; and passively compliant tarsi that mimic the animal's passive compliance to the walking substrate. We incorporated these features into a dynamical simulation of Drosophibot, and demonstrate that its actuators and sensors perform in an animal-like way. We used this simulation to test a neural walking controller based on anatomical and behavioral data from insects. Finally, we describe Drosophibot's hardware and show that the animal-like features of the simulation transfer to the physical robot.

Anipose: A toolkit for robust markerless 3D pose estimation

“…Thus, the neural circuits that move each leg during walking must be specialized for controlling joints with distinct forces and dynamics within each leg. Previous models of Drosophila walking have used an identical control architecture for intra-leg joint coordination for all six legs (Aminzare et al, 2018;Goldsmith et al, 2020). Our results provide a framework for constructing more biologically plausible neuromechanical models using distinct architectures for controlling different joints within each leg.…”

Anipose: a toolkit for robust markerless 3D pose estimation

“…Thus, the neural circuits that move each leg during walking must be specialized for controlling joints with distinct forces and dynamics within each leg. Previous models of Drosophila walking have used an identical control architecture for intra-leg joint coordination for all six legs [55,56]. Our results provide a framework for constructing more biologically plausible neuromechanical models using distinct architectures for controlling different joints within each leg.…”

Adaptive load feedback robustly signals force dynamics in robotic model of Carausius morosus stepping

“…The interleg coordination of insects and other arthropods is known to depend on the load supported by each leg (Cruse, 1990;Ekeberg et al, 2004;Zill et al, 2004;Dallmann et al, 2017). Neuromechanical simulations (Ekeberg et al, 2004;Szczecinski et al, 2014;Goldsmith et al, 2020) and robotic models (Szczecinski et al, 2015;Dürr et al, 2019) of animal locomotion reinforce this notion. However, to the authors' knowledge, no prior study has incorporated the dynamics of how CS measure load into their robot controller.…”

“…Multiple recent robots incorporate strain gauges in their legs to mimic CS, including Hector ( Dürr et al, 2019 ), Mantisbot ( Szczecinski et al, 2015 ), and Drosophibot ( Goldsmith et al, 2020 ). These robots were built as biomimetic models of the stick insect, praying mantis, and fruit fly, respectively.…”