Mechanical Models for Insect Locomotion: Dynamics and Stability in the Horizontal Plane-II. Application

We study the dynamics and stability of legged locomotion in the horizontal plane. We discuss the relevance of idealized mechanical models, developed in a companion paper, to recent experiments and simulations on insect running and turning. Applying our results to rapidly running cockroaches, we show that the models' gait and force characteristics match observations reasonably well.