Frontiers in Neurorobotics

Tubificine worms inhabit the sediments of lakes and rivers. They can form into blobs that behave like a single organism to adapt to extreme environmental conditions. Recreating an uneven and confined terrain, a group of scientists has recently studied the collective movement of worm blobs.

Salamanders can navigate complex and unstructured environments thanks to their impressive body-limb coordination. Researchers have built a model that mimics a salamander’s walk with the hope it aids the development of agile and adaptive robots that can flexibly change their body-limb coordination.