Related papers: The Dynamic of Body and Brain Co-Evolution
The design and control of winged aircraft and drones is an iterative process aimed at identifying a compromise of mission-specific costs and constraints. When agility is required, shape-shifting (morphing) drones represent an efficient…
Evolutionary robot systems offer two principal advantages: an advanced way of developing robots through evolutionary optimization and a special research platform to conduct what-if experiments regarding questions about evolution. Our study…
We present a comprehensive framework for studying and leveraging morphological symmetries in robotic systems. These are intrinsic properties of the robot's morphology, frequently observed in animal biology and robotics, which stem from the…
Co-designing a robot's morphology and control can ensure synergistic interactions between them, prevalent in biological organisms. However, co-design is a high-dimensional search problem. To make this search tractable, we need a systematic…
As robots become more prevalent, optimizing their design for better performance and efficiency is becoming increasingly important. However, current robot design practices overlook the impact of perception and design choices on a robot's…
Humans and animals excel in combining information from multiple sensory modalities, controlling their complex bodies, adapting to growth, failures, or using tools. These capabilities are also highly desirable in robots. They are displayed…
The co-optimization of a robot's body and brain presents a coupled challenge: the morphology constrains which control strategies are effective, while the control determines how well the morphology performs. To address this, we combine…
Biological lifeforms can heal, grow, adapt, and reproduce -- abilities essential for sustained survival and development. In contrast, robots today are primarily monolithic machines with limited ability to self-repair, physically develop, or…
In the most extensive robot evolution systems, both the bodies and the brains of the robots undergo evolution and the brains of 'infant' robots are also optimized by a learning process immediately after 'birth'. This paper is concerned with…
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…
Aquatic creatures exhibit remarkable adaptations of their body to efficiently interact with the surrounding fluid. The tight coupling between their morphology, motion, and the environment are highly complex but serves as a valuable example…
Soft robots have proven to outperform traditional robots in applications related to propagation in geometrically constrained environments. Designing these robots and their controllers is an intricate task, since their building materials…
Tensegrity structures are lightweight, can undergo large deformations, and have outstanding robustness capabilities. These unique properties inspired roboticists to investigate their use. However, the morphological design, control,…
This work provides a complete framework for the simulation, co-optimization, and sim-to-real transfer of the design and control of soft legged robots. The compliance of soft robots provides a form of "mechanical intelligence" -- the ability…
The ability to modify morphology in response to environmental changes represents a highly advantageous feature in biological organisms, facilitating their adaptation to diverse environmental conditions. While some robots have the capability…
For successful goal-directed human-robot interaction, the robot should adapt to the intentions and actions of the collaborating human. This can be supported by musculoskeletal or data-driven human models, where the former are limited to…
Musculoskeletal robots offer intrinsic compliance and flexibility, providing a promising paradigm for versatile locomotion. However, existing research typically relies on models with fixed muscle physiological parameters. This static…
Soft robots are distinguished by their flexibility and adaptability, allowing them to perform nearly impossible tasks for rigid robots. However, controlling their behavior is challenging due to their nonlinear material response and infinite…
Internal computational models of physical bodies are fundamental to the ability of robots and animals alike to plan and control their actions. These "self-models" allow robots to consider outcomes of multiple possible future actions,…
Designing soft robots poses considerable challenges: automated design approaches may be particularly appealing in this field, as they promise to optimize complex multi-material machines with very little or no human intervention.…