A roadmap is a plan that identifies short-term and long-term goals of a research area and suggests potential ways in which those goals can be met. This roadmap is based on collating answers from interview with experts in the field of biomimetics, and covers a broad range of specialties. Interviews were carried out at events organized by the Convergent Science Network, including a workshop on biomimetics and Living Machines 2012. We identified a number of areas of strategic importance, from biomimetic air and underwater vehicles, to robot designs based on animal bodies, to biomimetic technologies for sensing and perception. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Lepora, N.F.

Prescott, T.J.

Verschure, P.F.M.J.

A roadmap is a plan that identifies short-term and long-term goals of a research area and suggests potential ways in which those goals can be met. This roadmap is based on collating answers from interview with experts in the field of biomimetics, and covers a broad range of specialties. Interviews were carried out at events organized by the Convergent Science Network, including a workshop on biomimetics and Living Machines 2012. We identified a number of areas of strategic importance, from biomimetic air and underwater vehicles, to robot designs based on animal bodies, to biomimetic technologies for sensing and perception.</p

Lepora, Nathan F.

Verschure, Paul F M J

Prescott, Tony J.

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Towards a roadmap for living machines

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This is a repository copy of Towards a roadmap for living machines.White Rose Research Online URL for this paper:http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/108456/Version: Accepted VersionProceedings Paper:Lepora, N.F., Verschure, P.F.M.J. and Prescott, T.J. (2013) Towards a roadmap for living machines. In: Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems. Second International Conference, LivingMachines 2013, July 29 – August 2, 2013, London, UK. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 8064 . Springer Berlin Heidelberg , pp. 396-398. ISBN 9783642398018 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39802-5-46eprints@whiterose.ac.ukhttps://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/Reuse Unless indicated otherwise, fulltext items are protected by copyright with all rights reserved. The copyright exception in section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows the making of a single copy solely for the purpose of non-commercial research or private study within the limits of fair dealing. The publisher or other rights-holder may allow further reproduction and re-use of this version - refer to the White Rose Research Online record for this item. Where records identify the publisher as the copyright holder, users can verify any specific terms of use on the publisher’s website. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. A roadmap for living machinesNathan F. Lepora1,2, Paul F.M.J. Verschure3,4, and Tony J. Prescott1,21 Sheffield Center for Robotics (SCentRo), University of Sheffield, UK.2 Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, UK.{n.lepora,t.j.prescott}@sheffield.ac.uk3 SPECS, Department of Technology, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.4 ICREA, Barcelona, Spain Barcelona, Spain.paul.verschure@upf.eduAbstract. A roadmap is a plan that identifies short-term and long-termgoals of a research area and suggests potential ways in which those goalscan be met. This roadmap is based on collating answers from interviewwith experts in the field of biomimetics, and covers a broad range of spe-cialties. Interviews were carried out at events organized by the Conver-gent Science Network, including a workshop on biomimetics and LivingMachines 2012. We identified a number of areas of strategic importance,from biomimetic air and underwater vehicles, to robot designs based onanimal bodies, to biomimetic technologies for sensing and perception.A roadmap is a plan that identifies short-term and long-term goals of aresearch area and suggests potential ways in which those goals can be met.Developing a roadmap has three major uses. It helps reach a consensus about aset of goals and risks for a research area; it provides a mechanism to help forecastresearch developments and it provides a framework to help plan and coordinateresearch. The aim of this roadmap is to identify current trends relating to livingmachines together with their implications for future research.We have been constructing a roadmap on living machines, by collating an-swers from interviews with experts in the field of biomimetics across a broadrange of specialties. Interviews lasted about an hour each and were carried outat events organized by the Convergent Science Network [1]: (a) A Biomimeticsweek for the 2011 Barcelona Cognition, Brain and Technology Summer School(BCBT); (b) The 2012 Living Machines conference in La Pedrera, Barcelona [2].From these interviews, we identified several areas of strategic importancewhere the biomimetics of living machines can either further our understanding ofbiological systems or could lead to new technologies in robotics and engineering.A complete description of the strategic goals and risks of these areas will begiven in a full article to complement our recent paper The state of the art inbiomimetics [3] published in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics. For thetime being, we summarize briefly these various areas concerning living machines.Self-assembly, microstructures and micro-machines. Bio-inspired robotic sys-tems, with features at microscopic length scales are at the forefront of currentchallenges and opportunities in robotic hardware. They have the potential toLM2013, 053, v1: ’A roadmap for l...’ 12 N. Lepora, P. Verschure and T. Prescottintegrate nano-technology with macroscopic fabrication methods, and may leadto novel new methods of design and fabrication using bottom-up self-assemblyrather than conventional top-down engineering approaches.Biomimetic micro air vehicles (MAVs). Recently, a new class of MAVs arebeing developed that take inspiration from flying insects or birds to achieve un-precedented flight capabilities. Biological systems have inspired the applicationof unsteady aerodynamics to robots with flapping wings, while also motivatingthe use of other aspects of animal flight control such as distributed sensing.Biomimetic autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). A new trend in theAUV community is to mimic designs found in nature. Although most are cur-rently in their experimental stages, these biomimetic vehicles could be able toachieve higher degrees of efficiency in propulsion and maneuverability by copy-ing successful designs in nature. A variety of sensors can be affixed to AUVs tomeasure the concentration of various elements or compounds, the absorption orreflection of light, and the presence of microscopic life.Insect-based robotics. Insects are useful for biomimetic robotics because theirmorphologies and nervous systems are simpler than other animal species. Also,complex behaviors can be attributed to just a few neurons. Analysis of the walk-ing behavior and neural architecture of insects can be used to improve robotlocomotion. Alternatively, biologists can use insect-based robotics for testing bi-ological hypotheses about the neurophysiological mechanisms involved in insects.Soft and compliant robotics. The tentacles of squid, trunks of elephants, andtongues of mammals are examples of muscular hydrostats that inspire soft robotswith the potential for dextrous manipulation in hazardous or unstructured en-vironments. They are also a relatively safe technology to use around humansbecause of their compliant nature, making them ideal for the assistive or careapplications, such as for the elderly.Bipedal and quadrupedal robots. Types of bipedal movement include walking,running and hopping, while types of quadruped locomotion include trotting, pac-ing and bounding. Important principles include passive methods for un-poweredwalking, which has lead to novel designs for walking robots and furthered ourunderstanding of the function of human and animal physiology. Legged robotshave significant advantage over wheeled technologies in accessing areas currentlyunreachable.Humanoid robotics. A humanoid design for a robot might be for functionalpurposes, such as interacting with human tools and environments, or for exper-imental purposes, such as the study of bipedal locomotion. Although the initialaim of humanoid research was to build better orthosis and prosthesis for humanbeings, knowledge has been transferred between both disciplines.Social robotics and human-robot interaction. A social robot is an autonomousrobot that interacts and communicates with humans or other social agents. Aleading assumption is that social robots must develop a sense of self as to over-come the fundamental problem of social inferenceBrain-based robotics. One goal of brain-based robotics is to use robots forembodying the principles underlying animal behavior. This can include using2 LM2013, 053, v1: ’A roadmap for l...’Roadmap for Living Machines 3robots to study the neural mechanisms underlying movement control, perceptionand learning in animals, and in return to take inspiration from animals to designnew control and sensing methods for robotics. Another important application isto test biological hypotheses that would be difficult or impossible otherwise.Artificial olfaction and chemosensing. Devices that sense the existence of aparticular chemical concentration in air or water is becoming an increasingly im-portant requirement for modern robotics and automated systems. Applicationsinclude: quality control in food processing; detection and diagnosis in medicine;detection of drugs, explosives and dangerous or illegal substances; military andlaw enforcement; disaster response; and environmental monitoring.Artificial audition and echolocation. Bats and cetaceans, such as whales anddolphins, use sound for perception and have far superior sensing capabilities thanexisting technologies. Applications include object localization in environmentswhere vision is impaired, such as the dark, and even discriminating the materialproperties based on acoustic energy.Artificial touch. Nature has provided examples of many different types oftouch sensor to inspire artificial devices. Examples include the human fingertip,skin and tactile whiskers employed by animals such as rodents. Tactile sensorscan be used to sense a diverse range of stimulus ranging from detecting whetheran object has been grasped to a complete tactile image.Grasping and manipulation with robot hands. An important application oftactile sensing is to help reproduce in some way the grasping and manipulationcapabilities of humans. Even though many robotic devices have been developed,from very simple grippers to very complex anthropomorphic robotic hands, theirusability and reliability still lags far behind human capabilities.Acknowledgments. We thank Robert Allen, Joseph Ayers, Dieter Braun,Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Mark Cutkovsky, Yiannis Demiris, Frank Grasso, MitraHartmann, Auke Ijspeert, William Kier, Danica Kragic, Maarja Kruusma, DavidLane, David Lentink, Tim Pearce, Giovanni Pezzulo, Andrew Phillipides, BarryTrimmer, Ian Walker and David Zipser for contributing to the roadmap. Thiswork was supported by the EU coordination action ‘Convergent Science Network(CSN)’ (ICT-248986).References1. Convergent Science Network. http://www.csnetwork.eu.2. T. J. Prescott, N. F. Lepora, A. Mura, and P. Verschure. Biomimetic and BiohybridSystems: First International Conference, Living Machines 2012, Barcelona, Spain,July 9-12, 2012. Springer, 2012.3. N. F. Lepora, P. Verschure, and T.J. Prescott. The state of the art in biomimetics.Bioinspiration & biomimetics, 8(1):013001, 2013.LM2013, 053, v1: ’A roadmap for l...’ 3

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