Artificial Life Models in Hardware

Description

Hopping, climbing and swimming robots, nano-size neural networks, motorless walkers, slime mould and chemical brains --- this book offers unique designs and prototypes of life-like creatures in conventional hardware and hybrid bio-silicon systems. Ideas and implementations of living phenomena in non-living substrates cast a colourful picture of state-of-the-art advances in hardware models of artificial life. Focusing on topics and areas based on non-traditional thinking, and new and emerging paradigms in bio-inspired robotics, this book has a unifying theme: the design and real-world implementation of artificial life robotic devices. Students and researchers will find this coverage of topics such as robotic energy autonomy, multi-locomotion of robots, biologically inspired autonomous robots, evolution in colonies of robotic insects, neuromorphic analog devices, self-configurable robots, and chemical and biological controllers for robots, will considerably enhance their understanding of the issues involved in the development of not-traditional hardware systems at the cusp of artificial life and robotics. Front Matter....Pages i-xviii The History and Future of Stiquito: A Hexapod Insectoid Robot....Pages 1-20 Learning Legged Locomotion....Pages 21-33 Salamandra Robotica : A Biologically Inspired Amphibious Robot that Swims and Walks....Pages 35-64 Multilocomotion Robot: Novel Concept, Mechanism, and Control of Bio-inspired Robot....Pages 65-86 Self-regulatory Hardware: Evolutionary Design for Mechanical Passivity on a Pseudo Passive Dynamic Walker....Pages 87-102 Perception for Action in Roving Robots: A Dynamical System Approach....Pages 103-132 Nature-inspired Single-electron Computers....Pages 133-159 Tribolon: Water-Based Self-Assembly Robots....Pages 161-184 Artificial Symbiosis in EcoBots....Pages 185-211 The Phi-Bot: A Robot Controlled by a Slime Mould....Pages 213-232 Reaction–Diffusion Controllers for Robots....Pages 233-264 Back Matter....Pages 265-267