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About

Yoshimasa Egi is a pioneering researcher in the field of bio-inspired robotics, specializing in the neural and mechanical principles underlying multi-limbed locomotion. His work bridges the gap between neurophysiological findings and robotic implementation, focusing on how animals—and robots—transition between gaits and adapt to speed. Egi’s major contributions include demonstrating the functional role of phase resetting in enabling a biped robot to smoothly shift from quadrupedal to bipedal locomotion, a breakthrough that clarified a long-standing question in motor control. His 2012 paper on this topic has garnered 40 citations, while his 2013 study on centipedes revealed an instability-based mechanism for generating body undulations at higher speeds, earning 35 citations. This work showed that body waves in centipedes are not actively controlled but emerge from passive dynamics—a key insight for designing flexible, multi-segmented robots. Though his 2008 experimental verification of gait transition has fewer citations (7), it provided foundational hardware validation for oscillator-driven control. Egi’s research offers elegant, testable models of biological locomotion, inspiring new approaches to adaptive robotics and rehabilitation engineering.