{"title":"<i>Elongating, entwining, and dragging</i>: mechanism for adaptive locomotion of tubificine worm blobs in a confined environment.","authors":"Taishi Mikami, Daiki Wakita, Ryo Kobayashi, Akio Ishiguro, Takeshi Kano","doi":"10.3389/fnbot.2023.1207374","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Worms often aggregate through physical connections and exhibit remarkable functions such as efficient migration, survival under environmental changes, and defense against predators. In particular, entangled blobs demonstrate versatile behaviors for their survival; they form spherical blobs and migrate collectively by flexibly changing their shape in response to the environment. In contrast to previous studies on the collective behavior of worm blobs that focused on locomotion in a flat environment, we investigated the mechanisms underlying their adaptive motion in confined environments, focusing on tubificine worm collectives. We first performed several behavioral experiments to observe the aggregation process, collective response to aversive stimuli, the motion of a few worms, and blob motion in confined spaces with and without pegs. We found the blob deformed and passed through a narrow passage using environmental heterogeneities. Based on these behavioral findings, we constructed a simple two-dimensional agent-based model wherein the flexible body of a worm was described as a cross-shaped agent that could deform, rotate, and translate. The simulations demonstrated that the behavioral findings were well-reproduced. Our findings aid in understanding how physical interactions contribute to generating adaptive collective behaviors in real-world environments as well as in designing novel swarm robotic systems consisting of soft agents.</p>","PeriodicalId":12628,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Neurorobotics","volume":"17 ","pages":"1207374"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10495593/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Frontiers in Neurorobotics","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2023.1207374","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Worms often aggregate through physical connections and exhibit remarkable functions such as efficient migration, survival under environmental changes, and defense against predators. In particular, entangled blobs demonstrate versatile behaviors for their survival; they form spherical blobs and migrate collectively by flexibly changing their shape in response to the environment. In contrast to previous studies on the collective behavior of worm blobs that focused on locomotion in a flat environment, we investigated the mechanisms underlying their adaptive motion in confined environments, focusing on tubificine worm collectives. We first performed several behavioral experiments to observe the aggregation process, collective response to aversive stimuli, the motion of a few worms, and blob motion in confined spaces with and without pegs. We found the blob deformed and passed through a narrow passage using environmental heterogeneities. Based on these behavioral findings, we constructed a simple two-dimensional agent-based model wherein the flexible body of a worm was described as a cross-shaped agent that could deform, rotate, and translate. The simulations demonstrated that the behavioral findings were well-reproduced. Our findings aid in understanding how physical interactions contribute to generating adaptive collective behaviors in real-world environments as well as in designing novel swarm robotic systems consisting of soft agents.
期刊介绍:
Frontiers in Neurorobotics publishes rigorously peer-reviewed research in the science and technology of embodied autonomous neural systems. Specialty Chief Editors Alois C. Knoll and Florian Röhrbein at the Technische Universität München are supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international experts. This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating scientific knowledge and impactful discoveries to researchers, academics and the public worldwide.
Neural systems include brain-inspired algorithms (e.g. connectionist networks), computational models of biological neural networks (e.g. artificial spiking neural nets, large-scale simulations of neural microcircuits) and actual biological systems (e.g. in vivo and in vitro neural nets). The focus of the journal is the embodiment of such neural systems in artificial software and hardware devices, machines, robots or any other form of physical actuation. This also includes prosthetic devices, brain machine interfaces, wearable systems, micro-machines, furniture, home appliances, as well as systems for managing micro and macro infrastructures. Frontiers in Neurorobotics also aims to publish radically new tools and methods to study plasticity and development of autonomous self-learning systems that are capable of acquiring knowledge in an open-ended manner. Models complemented with experimental studies revealing self-organizing principles of embodied neural systems are welcome. Our journal also publishes on the micro and macro engineering and mechatronics of robotic devices driven by neural systems, as well as studies on the impact that such systems will have on our daily life.