Leg Mechanics of Arthropods

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This project establishes a general theory of the mechanics of walking with more than two legs. Arthropods are used as test models for the hypothesis. The research has potential application to the efficient control of walking machines, robots, and remote manipulators which must walk on the ground, climb on structures, and move in confined spaces for construction, maintenance, surveillance, and other related tasks. The work proceeds in four phases which include: 1) Survey the gross leg characteristics and potential leg motions of a variety of dead arthropods including representatives of all major pedestrian classes of measurable size; 2) Evaluate these measured legs from the arthropod survey according to accepted mechanical criteria to begin to determine for what functions they have been optimized; 3) Develop the process of high speed photography and digitization of the resulting images to analyze motion of living arthropods; and 4) Expand the computer model for such movement.