Abstract:
Elephants have to maintain stability of a body
weighing 2700 kg - 4500 kg in a wide range of unstructured
terrain conditions. To achieve this, the dynamic walking
control strategies of an elephant should be able to manage the
large inertial forces working on the leg muscles. Therefore,
understanding the gait patterns of an elephant can indicate the
possible robust control strategies that an elephant may be
adopting by exploiting its body dynamics and kinematics. This
paper presents a simple method to analyze the gait patterns of
an elephant using videos and snapshots. In the research, we
have used three Asian elephants to capture videos and
snapshots in order to obtain primary data. Finally, two
outcomes were illustrated. Firstly, the ratios of body segments
of the elephant were calculated using snapshots, and secondly,
movements of the four limbs in the Sagittarius plane were
measured and graphs were generated against time. Since the
data used here were obtained from the images, errors can be
occurred due to the scale of the image and measuring
techniques. These errors were mitigated by carrying out
appropriate error corrections.
