Mechanistic explanation of gait-like coordination emergence

Investigate the full mechanistic account of how morphology, control, and design specifications produce gait-like coordination in the GLAMDRING learned CPG design space.

Background

GLAMDRING learns CPG-based locomotion without rewarding any particular gait. The experiments show that the resulting inter-leg phase offsets often resemble canonical animal gaits, but that the strength and type of gait-like convergence depend on the design specification and velocity constraints. Identical link lengths can therefore produce different canonical phase patterns under different constraints. The paper characterizes this phenomenon as emergent and condition-dependent but does not explain the mechanisms through which morphology, control, and specification jointly determine the observed coordination patterns.

References

We therefore interpret gait-like coordination as an emergent but condition-dependent property of the learned CPG design space. A full mechanistic account is left for future work.

— GLAMDRING: Gait Learning And Morphology co-Design via Reinforcement LearnING of CPGs  (2609.19452 - Joshi et al., 16 Sep 2026) in Section 4.3, “Gait-Like Coordination Emerges Without Gait Rewards” (subsection label: sec:gaits)