Bio-inspired robotics

What lets us pick up a beat so quickly? The MSCA-funded project COROBOREES (Collective Robotics via Real-Time Entrainment of Evolved dynamical Systems) investigated how entrainment (i.e. period-matching to external stimulus) can be achieved in neural circuits. This project was based at The University of Oslo’s RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion.

We have found that simple spiking central pattern generators (CPG), when sufficiently flexible in their oscillation frequencies, can spontaneously entrain to rhythmic stimulus at a wide range of frequencies ((Szorkovszky et al., 2023), (Szorkovszky et al., 2023)).

Further work with Benedikte Wallace and Kyrre Glette (Wallace et al., 2025) has mapped out paths for robot dance that is both expressive and responsive.

References

2025

  1. How can we make robot dance expressive and responsive? A survey of methods and future directions
    Benedikte Wallace, Kyrre Glette, and Alex Szorkovszky
    Frontiers in Computer Science, 2025

2023

  1. Central pattern generators evolved for real-time adaptation to rhythmic stimuli
    Alex Szorkovszky, Frank Veenstra, and Kyrre Glette
    Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 2023
  2. Embodied Tempo Tracking with a Virtual Quadruped
    Alex Szorkovszky, Frank Veenstra, Olivier Lartillot, and 2 more authors
    In 20th Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC 2023), 2023