FIBR: Neuromechanical Systems Biology

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The last half-century has witnessed unprecedented discoveries from molecular motors to brain images during movement. Despite such extraordinary advances, how the multitudes of structures at different scales interact to generate an animals' hallmark behavior - locomotion - remains elusive. While locomotion can be deconstructed into a simple cascade - from brain to muscles to work on the external world - such a unidirectional framework has failed to incorporate essential dynamic properties created by an interaction of networks among and within levels. The grand challenge is to elucidate the complex network of dynamical systems that allows animal locomotion. This research will uncover fundamental control architectures by physically perturbing running insects, challenging them with virtual terrains, degrading and rewriting the neural codes while measuring motion, forces and neuromuscular signals (http://polypedal.berkeley.edu/NSB). The project capitalizes on a dynamical systems approach in concert with our remarkable hexapedal, legged robot as a controlled experiment, manipulating parameters more easily than in animals, but subjecting the physical model to real environments. The project's stated challenge cannot be met within the domain of Biology alone, even if biologists take a multi-level, multidimensional approach. The challenge demands a multidisciplinary effort to match data across mathematical models, numerical simulations, physical models, as well as biological experiments. The project's team incorporates experts across the full spectrum of these disciplines.Broader Impacts: To the broader community, the project will deliver computational tools applicable to dynamical models of gene regulation, metabolism, and cardiology, as well as neuroscience and locomotion. Findings will stimulate a new field of neuromechanical systems biology, inspire novel controllers in engineering, lead to development of prostheses and artificial muscles and further the design of the first search and rescue robot that has performance truly comparable to animals. Most importantly, the project will produce a new type of young scientist who can lead this emerging multidisciplinary frontier. Discoveries will be shared through publication, symposia, a web-based flagship course, and educational robotics contests.