Their Transfer to Walking Machines

A systems approach to animal motor behavior reveals concepts that can be useful for the pragmatic design of walking machines. This is because the relation of animal behavior to its underlying nervous control algorithms bears many parallels to the relation of machine function to electronic control. Here, three major neuroethological concepts of motor behavior are described in terms of a concep-tual framework based on artificial neural networks (ANN). Central patterns of activity and postural reflexes are both interpreted as a result of feedback loops, with the distinction of loops via an inter-nal model from loops via the physical environment (body, external world). This view allows continuous transitions between predictive (centrally driven) and reactive (reflex driven) motor systems. Mo-tor primitives, behavioral modules that are elicited by distinct com-mands, are also considered. ANNs capture these three major con