locomotion
4 free lessons tagged locomotion across Robotics. Each one is a short sequence of focused steps with narration and a five-question quiz at the end — take them in any order, no signup required.
Feedback, Movement Primitives, and Modern Practice
Where the pure feedforward story breaks: sensory entrainment, dynamic movement primitives for non-rhythmic motion, how CPGs combine with reinforcement learning in current legged robots, and the exoskeleton applications.
The Salamander Robot
The experiment that put a spinal cord model in an amphibious machine: how one drive signal switches a robot from swimming to walking, and what that says about how vertebrate locomotion evolved.
The Mathematics of Coupled Oscillators
How a handful of phase oscillators produce coordinated gaits: limit cycles and why they resist disturbance, phase coupling that locks oscillators into fixed relationships, and the travelling waves that swim a robot.
Why Locomotion Is Not a Planning Problem
Walking is rhythmic, fast, and must survive disturbances no planner anticipated. The biological answer is a spinal circuit that generates rhythm without the brain, and it suggests a fundamentally different control architecture.