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SUMMARY:Robotic Approaches in Locomotor Biology - Dr William Seller (Unive
 rsity of Manchester)
DTSTART:20151106T160000Z
DTEND:20151106T170000Z
UID:TALK62223@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Josie Hughes
DESCRIPTION:Many robotics projects borrow aspects of animal locomotion in 
 their design. However information flow the other way is rather less common
  and this means that much of the engineering rigor and the novel approache
 s from the robotics community do not easily find their way into animal loc
 omotor research. However one area where robotics ideas have been embraced 
 with some enthusiasm is palaeontology where they can be used to try and ac
 curately reconstruct the locomotor capabilities of fossil animals. This ta
 lk will concentrate on what we can learn from studying the mechanics of fo
 ssil organisms using evolutionary robotic simulation techniques running on
  high performance computers. It will demonstrate the way early humans move
 d and what this tells us about the origins of moderns humans. Similarly\, 
 it will discuss how fast and how heavy the largest dinosaurs were and what
  this means about the way they lived and moved. However there are limitati
 ons to what can currently be achieved and\nhopefully this can be addressed
  in future with further cross-disciplinary interaction.\n\n*Biography*\nBi
 ll Sellers is a Reader in Integrative Vertebrate Biology at the University
  of Manchester. He was initially trained as a zoologist in Cambridge and w
 as awarded his PhD on primate locomotion in Liverpool before working at va
 rious institutions including the Universities of Edinburgh and Loughboroug
 h. His research interests include the use of high performance computing si
 mulations to reconstruct the locomotor capabilities of extinct animals usi
 ng evolutionary robotics techniques. Pursuing this he excavates dinosaur f
 ossils in North America and films animals in various locations around the 
 world in both field and laboratory settings.
LOCATION:CUED\, LR10
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