Dynamics of Rapid Vertical Climbing in Cockroaches Reveals a Template.
From: Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3140, USA. digoldma@berkeley.edu
The Journal of experimental biology
- Publish Date: Aug 2006
- ISSN: 0022-0949
- Volume: 209
- Issue: Pt 15
- Pages: 2990-3000
- Medium: Print
- Language: English
- Citation (JAMA): Goldman Daniel I, Chen Tao S, Dudek Daniel M, et al. Dynamics of Rapid Vertical Climbing in Cockroaches Reveals a Template.. J. Exp. Biol. Aug 2006;209:2990-3000
Abstract
Rapid, vertically climbing cockroaches produced climbing dynamics similar to geckos, despite differences in attachment mechanism, ;foot or toe’ morphology and leg number. Given the common pattern in such diverse species, we propose the first template for the dynamics of rapid, legged climbing analogous to the spring-loaded, inverted pendulum used to characterize level running in a diversity of pedestrians. We measured single leg wall reaction forces and center of mass dynamics in death-head cockroaches Blaberus discoidalis, as they ascended a three-axis force plate oriented vertically and coated with glass beads to aid attachment. Cockroaches used an alternating tripod gait during climbs at 19.5+/-4.2 cm s(-1), approximately 5 body lengths s(-1). Single-leg force patterns differed significantly from level running. During vertical climbing, all legs generated forces to pull the animal up the plate. Front and middle legs pulled laterally toward the midline. Front legs pulled the head toward the wall, while hind legs pushed the abdomen away. These single-leg force patterns summed to generate dynamics of the whole animal in the frontal plane such that the center of mass cyclically accelerated up the wall in synchrony with cyclical side-to-side motion that resulted from alternating net lateral pulling forces. The general force patterns used by cockroaches and geckos have provided biological inspiration for the design of a climbing robot named RiSE (Robots in Scansorial Environments).
Mesh Headings (Keywords): Animals, Biomechanics, Cockroaches, Locomotion, Time Factors
Check for Full Text / PubMed Unique Identifier (PMID): 16857883
This abstract is part of PubMed, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. PubMed includes more than 17 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles. See Copyright and Disclaimers.
Linked medical terms appearing on this page are added by Healia to help readers find more information and are not part of the original PubMed document.
The data herein was last updated on July 8th, 2008 and may not reflect the most current and accurate data available from NLM.