A terrain treadmill to study animal locomotion through large obstacles

A major challenge to understanding locomotion in complex 3-D terrain with large obstacles is to create tools for controlled, systematic lab experiments. Existing terrain arenas only allow observations at small spatiotemporal scales (∼10 body length, ∼10 stride cycles). Here, we create a terrain treadmill to enable high-resolution observations of animal locomotion through large obstacles over large spatiotemporal scales. An animal moves through modular obstacles on an inner sphere, while a rigidly-attached, concentric, transparent outer sphere rotated with the opposite velocity via closed-loop feedback to keep the animal on top. During sustained locomotion, a discoid cockroach moved through pillar obstacles for 25 minutes (≈ 2500 strides) over 67 m (≈ 1500 body lengths), and was contained within a radius of 4 cm (0.9 body length) for 83% of the duration, even at speeds of up to 10 body length/s. The treadmill enabled observation of diverse locomotor behaviors and quantification of animal-obstacle interaction. Summary Statement A device keeps a small animal on top of a sphere while it traverses obstacles, creating a “terrain treadmill” to study locomotion over a long time and distance at high-resolution.