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Soft growing robots are novel devices that mimic plant-like growth for navigation in cluttered or dangerous environments. Their ability to adapt to surroundings, combined with advancements in actuation and manufacturing technologies, allows…

Geometric mechanics provides valuable insights into how biological and robotic systems use changes in shape to move by mechanically interacting with their environment. In high-friction environments it provides that the entire interaction is…

Evolution gave rise to human and animal intelligence here on Earth. We argue that the path to developing artificial human-like-intelligence will pass through mimicking the evolutionary process in a nature-like simulation. In Nature, there…

Learning adaptable policies is crucial for robots to operate autonomously in our complex and quickly changing world. In this work, we present a new meta-learning method that allows robots to quickly adapt to changes in dynamics. In contrast…

The joint optimisation of body-plan and control via evolutionary processes can be challenging in rich morphological spaces in which offspring can have body-plans that are very different from either of their parents. This causes a potential…

Bio-hybrid systems---close couplings of natural organisms with technology---are high potential and still underexplored. In existing work, robots have mostly influenced group behaviors of animals. We explore the possibilities of mixing…

The co-design of robot morphology and neural control typically requires using reinforcement learning to approximate a unique control policy gradient for each body plan, demanding massive amounts of training data to measure the performance…

Diverse biological networks exhibit universal features distinguished from those of random networks, calling much attention to their origins and implications. Here we propose a minimal evolution model of Boolean regulatory networks, which…

The challenge of robotic reproduction -- making of new robots by recombining two existing ones -- has been recently cracked and physically evolving robot systems have come within reach. Here we address the next big hurdle: producing an…

The morphology of a slender soft-robot can be modified by sensing its shape via sensors and exerting moments via actuators embedded along its body. The actuating moments required to morph these soft-robots to a desired shape are often…

In this study, we provide a relatively simple simulation framework for constructing artificial life (ALife) with both autonomous and evolutionary aspects by extending chemoton model. While the original chemoton incorporates metabolism,…

Learning in living organisms is typically associated with networks of neurons. The use of large numbers of adjustable units has also been a crucial factor in the continued success of artificial neural networks. In light of the complexity of…

The mutual influence of dynamics and structure is a central issue in complex systems. In this paper we study by simulation slow evolution of network under the feedback of a local-majority-rule opinion process. If performance-enhancing local…

Robot co-design, where the morphology of a robot is optimized jointly with a learned policy to solve a specific task, is an emerging area of research. It holds particular promise for soft robots, which are amenable to novel manufacturing…

Precise kinematic modeling is critical in calibration and controller design for soft robots, yet remains a challenging issue due to their highly nonlinear and complex behaviors. To tackle the issue, numerous data-driven machine learning…

Industrial robots become increasingly prevalent, resulting in a growing need for intuitive, comforting human-robot collaboration. We present a user-aware robotic system that adapts to operator behavior in real time while non-intrusively…

This paper addresses the lower limits of encoding and processing the information acquired through interactions between an internal system (robot algorithms or software) and an external system (robot body and its environment) in terms of…

The central goal of a dynamical theory of evolution is to abstract the mean evolutionary trajectory in the trait space by considering ecological processes at the level of the individual. In this work, we develop such a theory for a new…

Robots built from soft materials can alter their shape and size in a particular profile. This shape-changing ability could be extremely helpful for rescue robots and those operating in unknown terrains and environments. In changing shape,…

Soft robots can exhibit better performance in specific tasks compared to conventional robots, particularly in healthcare-related tasks. However, the field of soft robotics is still young, and designing them often involves mimicking natural…