Biorobotics Laboratory BioRob

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Traveling Wave Pattern Generator using Reaction-Diffusion Systems

Abstract

The goal of this work was to explore travelling waves in reaction-diffusion systems. As reaction-diffusions systems are rather long to compute, a first part has been devoted to the implementation of a program able to solve such systems on parallel computers. Having achieving this, the next part was to study the properties of the travelling waves generated with those systems. A specific system has been chosen for the analysis. This is the Fitzhugh-Nagumo equations which model nerve impulses in neural membranes. Some expirements has been made in 2 dimensions, but the analysis has only been made in one dimension. The results allows to see some relationships between the system parameters and the properties of the generated waves. By using these results and the results of preceding works done on the lamprey locomotion, it was possible to construct a Central Pattern Generator able to reproduce the swimming of the lamprey.