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Extending and modifying his domain of life by artifact production is one of the main characteristics of humankind. From the first hominid, who used a wood stick or a stone for extending his upper limbs and augmenting his gesture strength,…
Even when concepts similar to emergence have been used since antiquity, we lack an agreed definition. However, emergence has been identified as one of the main features of complex systems. Most would agree on the statement ``life is…
The idea that there are any large-scale trends in the evolution of biological organisms is highly controversial. It is commonly believed, for example, that there is a large-scale trend in evolution towards increasing complexity, but…
Inherent limitations of contemporary machine learning systems in crucial areas -- importantly in continual learning, information reuse, comprehensibility, and integration with deliberate behavior -- are receiving increasing attention. To…
Open-ended evolutionary dynamics remains an elusive goal for artificial evolutionary systems. Many ideas exist in the biological literature beyond the basic Darwinian requirements of variation, differential reproduction and inheritance. I…
In nature, biological organisms jointly evolve both their morphology and their neurological capabilities to improve their chances for survival. Consequently, task information is encoded in both their brains and their bodies. In robotics,…
Due to the diffusion of IoT, modern software systems are often thought to control and coordinate smart devices in order to manage assets and resources, and to guarantee efficient behaviours. For this class of systems, which interact…
Recent developments in machine-learning algorithms have led to impressive performance increases in many traditional application scenarios of artificial intelligence research. In the area of deep reinforcement learning, deep learning…
A well-designed control system facilitates the functions of machine operation, maintenance and development. In addition, the overall effectiveness of the control system can be greatly enhanced by providing reliable mechanisms for…
Robots and intelligent systems that sense or interact with the world are increasingly being used to automate a wide array of tasks. The ability of these systems to complete these tasks depends on a large range of technologies such as the…
Complementarity among species with different traits is one of the basic processes affecting biodiversity, defined as the number of species in the ecosystem. We present here a soluble model ecosystem in which the species are characterized by…
In contrast with the diversity of materials found in nature, most robots are designed with some combination of aluminum, stainless steel, and 3D-printed filament. Additionally, robotic systems are typically assumed to follow basic…
Task assignment and scheduling algorithms are powerful tools for autonomously coordinating large teams of robotic or AI agents. However, the decisions these system make often rely on components designed by domain experts, which can be…
A core aspect of human intelligence is the ability to learn new tasks quickly and switch between them flexibly. Here, we describe a modular continual reinforcement learning paradigm inspired by these abilities. We first introduce a visual…
The diversity of patterns that emerge from complex systems motivates their use for scientific or artistic purposes. When exploring these systems, the challenges faced are the size of the parameter space and the strongly non-linear mapping…
Multiset rewriting systems provide a formalism particularly suitable for the description of biological systems. We present an extension of this formalism with additional controls on the derivations as a tool for reducing possible…
Homogeneity and heterogeneity represent a well-known trade-off in the design of modular robot systems. This work addresses the heterogeneity concept, its rationales, design choices and performance evaluation. We introduce challenges for…
A robotic swarm that is required to operate for long periods in a potentially unknown environment can use both evolution and individual learning methods in order to adapt. However, the role played by the environment in influencing the…
Many current robot designs prioritize efficiency and one-size-fits-all solutions, oftentimes overlooking personalization, adaptability, and sustainability. To explore alternatives, we conducted two co-design workshops with 23 participants,…
By dynamic planning, we refer to the ability of the human brain to infer and impose motor trajectories related to cognitive decisions. A recent paradigm, active inference, brings fundamental insights into the adaptation of biological…