Entrainment of Silicon Central Pattern Generators for Legged Locomotory Control

We demonstrate improvements over a previous chip by moving toward a significantly more versatile device. This includes a larger number of silicon neurons, more sophisticated neurons including voltage dependent charging and relative and absolute refractory periods, and enhanced programmability of neural networks. This chip builds on the basic results achieved on a previous chip and expands its versatility to get closer to a self-contained locomotion controller for walking robots. 1 Introduction Legged locomotion is a system level behavior that engages most senses and activates most muscles in the human body. Understanding of biological systems is exceedingly difficult and usually defies any unifying analysis. Walking behavior is no exception. Theories of walking are likely incomplete, often in ways that are invisible to the scientist studying these behavior in animal or human systems. Biological systems often fill in gaps and details. One way of exposing our incomplete understanding is through the process of synthesis. In this paper we report on continued progress in building the basic elements of a motor pattern generator sufficient to control a legged robot.