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Fig. 1. (A) Spring-mass model (or `spring-loaded inverted pendulum', SLIP) for the
dynamics of legged terrestrial locomotion. The body is represented by a point
mass m, located at the body center of mass (CoM; black circle), and
the leg by a linear compression spring with leg stiffness
kleg and contact angle 
o. (B) Despite
its simplicity, the spring-mass model accurately describes the fluctuations in
mechanical energy of the body during running (PEg,
gravitational potential energy; KEv and
KEh, vertical and horizontal kinetic energy, respectively;
Ecom, center of mass energy)
(Daley and Biewener, 2006;
Daley et al., 2006). (C)
Furthermore, all terrestrial animals appear to exhibit spring-mass dynamics,
whether they run on two, four, six or eight legs. Multiple legs act in concert
to produce the effective `leg-spring' dynamics
(Holmes et al., 2006). (D)
Similarly, a lateral spring-mass model describes well the medio-lateral
dynamics of cockroach locomotion, in which three legs operate as a single
effective `leg-spring' in the medio-lateral plane
(Full et al., 2002).
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