Locomotion is the act or power of moving from one place to another. It is a term used in ethology to describe the various methods that animals use to move, including running, swimming, jumping, flying, hopping, soaring, and gliding. The anatomical structures that animals use for movement, such as cilia, legs, wings, arms, fins, or tails, are sometimes referred to as locomotory organs or locomotory structures.
The study of animal locomotion is a branch of biology that investigates and quantifies how animals move. It is an application of kinematics, used to understand how the movements of animal limbs relate to the motion of the whole animal, for instance when walking or flying.
Locomotion is also an important area of endeavor in video game art and design and virtual reality (VR) . Creating realistic locomotion for digital content requires an understanding of how that movement is accomplished and what it looks like in the physical world. In VR gaming, locomotion usually refers to systems that allow the user to navigate through the virtual environment.
In medicine, locomotion refers to movement from one place to another, and the ability to locomote is the ability to get from one place to the next. The locomotive system permits locomotion and consists of bones that are the framework of the skeleton, joints that hold the bones together and make movement possible, and muscles that contract and relax and make for movement.
