• gait
• locomotion
• Polypterus
• Polypterus Senegalus
• simulation
• tethrapod

The current understanding of how different gaits can emerge in animals and of how those gaits evolved in relation to the body morphology is very limited. This is especially true regarding the locomotion of amphibians and how locomotion features co-evolved in the transition from water to land.
Since tetrapods, especially the Salamander, have been studied more deeply, this work focus on the analysis of the terrestrial gait of Polypterus Sen., a fish that presents terrestrial locomotion capabilities.
Given the observed similarities between the gaits of the two animals and the absence of a clear evolutionary path between them, a preliminary kinematics-based analysis is performed to understand how Polypterus can exploit its elongated body morphology for locomotion.
Since further analysis depends on the understanding of the dynamics underlying this movement, a simulation framework based on the open-source physics engine PyBullet is then developed. This framework allows control, optimization, and visualization operations to be performed conveniently and easily with a generic elongated-body morphology and varying physical parameters.
The tool is meant to greatly improve the testing of different hypotheses regarding the locomotion of Polypterus (and elongated-body animals), offloading the set-up, control, and optimization needed to test them.
Preliminary results are also obtained which confirm the correctness of the results deriving from the kinematic analysis.