Energy-Economical Heuristically Based Control of Compass Gait Walking on Stochastically Varying Terrain

Investigation uses simulation to explore the inherent tradeoffs ofcontrolling high-speed and highly robust walking robots while minimizing energy consumption. Using a novel controller which optimizes robustness, energy economy, and speed of a simulated robot on rough terrain, the user can adjust their priorities between these three outcome measures and systematically generate a performance curveassessing the tradeoffs associated with these metrics.

Evolution of the Morphology of Bottom Walking Turtles

Ecomorphology and functional morphology are two distinct disciplines within biology that are often conflated and erroneously used interchangeably. By investigating the morphological distinctiveness of bottom-walking turtles relative to aquatic swimmers and terrestrial walkers, we can disentangle the effects of ecology and performance. Shell morphology, tail length, digit length, webbing length, and integumental differences were examined using dry and wet preserved specimens. Bottom-walkers were hypothesized to be distinct in all measurements. Instead, bottom-walkers were typically distinct from terrestrial taxa but not aquatic taxa, although for integumentary structures, only bottom-walkers were found to have significantly more integumentary structures than terrestrial turtles. This demonstrates that, despite sometimes highly differential locomotor modes, ecology, defined as habitat type, can show a stronger morphological signal than function.