Emergence of Swing-to-Stance Transition from Interlocking Mechanism in Horse Hindlimb

Abstract

The bodies of quadrupeds have very complex muscle-tendon structure. In particular, it is known that in the horse hindlimb, multiple joints in the leg are remarkably interlocked due to the muscle-tendon structure. Although the function of these interlocking mechanisms during standing has been investigated in the field of anatomy, the function related to the emergence of limb trajectory during dynamic walking has not been revealed. To investigate the role of the interlocking mechanism, we developed a robot model imitating the muscle-tendon arrangement and the dynamics of a horse hindlimb. In the walking experiment, the robot autonomously generated a limb trajectory with a smooth transition between the swing phase and the stance phase by simply swinging the hip joint with sinusoidal input. Moreover, we compared the joint angles between successful and failed walking. The compared results indicate that the extension of the fetlock joint after hoof touchdown plays the crucial role in emergence of a function of supporting body.