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Symbiotic Robot Organisms: REPLICATOR and SYMBRION Projects Symbiotic Robot Organisms: REPLICATOR and SYMBRION Projects Special Session on EU-projects ∗ Serge Kernbach Marc Szymanski Thomas Schmickl Paolo Corradi Eugen Meister Jens Liedke Ronald Thenius Leonardo Ricotti Florian Davide Laneri Karl-Franzens- Scuola Superiore Schlachter Lutz Winkler University Sant’Anna Kristof Jebens University of Graz Viale Rinaldo Piaggio University of Stuttgart Karlsruhe Universitatsplatz 2 34 Universitätsstr. 38, Engler-Bunte-Ring 8 A-8010 Graz, Austria 56025 - Pontedera D-70569 Stuttgart, D-76131 Karlsruhe, (PI), Italy Germany Germany ABSTRACT haviours are mostly explained by reciprocal advantages due Cooperation and competition among stand - alone swarm to the cooperative behaviours and/or by the close relation- agents can increase the collective fitness of the whole system. ship among the community members. In contrast to that, An interesting form of collective system is demonstrated by cooperation sometimes arises also among individuals that some bacteria and fungi, which can build symbiotic organ- are not just very distant in a gene pool, sometimes they do isms. Symbiotic communities can enable new functional ca- not even share the same gene pool: Cooperative behaviours pabilities which allow all members to survive better in their between members of different species is called ’Symbiosis’. environment. In this article we show an overview of two A non-exhaustive list of prominent examples are the polli- large European projects dealing with new collective robotic nation of plants by flying insects (or birds), the cooperation systems which utilize principles derived from natural sym- between ants and aphids. Also lichens, which are a close biosis. The paper provides also an overview of typical hard- integration of fungi and algae and the cooperation between ware, software and methodological challenges arose along plant roods and fungi represent symbiotic interactions. these projects, as well as some prototypes and on-going ex- A common pattern in all these above-mentioned forms of periments available on this stage. cooperation is that single individuals perform behaviours, which - on the first sight - are more supportive for the collec- Keywords: collective robotics, swarms, artificial evolu- tive of the group than for themselves. However, as these be- tion, reconfigurable systems haviours have emerged through natural selection, we can as- sume that these cooperative behaviours have their ultimate 1. INTRODUCTION reasoning in a sometimes delayed and often non-obvious in- dividual egoistic advantage. Nature shows several interesting examples for cooperation Symbiotic forms of organization emerge new functional ca- of individuals. Most prominent examples of cooperation are pabilities which allow aggregated organisms to achieve bet- found in social insects [1], where specialized reproductive ter fitness in the environment. When the need of aggregation schemes (in most cases just a few out of thousands of colony is over, symbiotic organism can dis-aggregate and exists fur- members are able to reproduce) and the close relationships ther as stand-alone agents, thus an adaptive and dynamical of colony members favoured the emergence of highly coop- form of cooperation is often advantageous. erative behaviours [2]. However, also non-eusocial forms of Lately, technical systems mimic natural collective systems cooperative communities evolved, like the collective hunt- in improving functionality of artificial swarm agents. Col- ing in predatory mamals [3] (e.g., lions, whales, ...) or the lective, networked or swarm robotics are scientific domains, trophallactic altruism in vampire bats. Such cooperative be- dealing with a cooperation in robotics [4]. Current research ∗ in these domains is mostly concentrated on cooperation and Corresp. author: [email protected] competition among stand-alone robots to increase their com- mon fitness [5]. However, robots can build a principally new kind of collective systems, when to allow them to aggregate into a multi-robot organism-like-forms. This ”robot organ- Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are ism” can perform such activities that cannot be achieved not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies by other kind of robotic systems and so to achieve better bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to functional fitness. republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific To demonstrate this idea, we consider a collective en- permission and/or a fee. ergy foraging scenario for micro-robots Jasmine [6]. Swarm PerMIS 08, August 19-21, 2008, Gaithersburg, MD, USA robots can autonomously find an energy source and recharge. Copyright 2008 ACM 978-1-60558-293-1 ...$5.00. The clever collective strategy can essentially improve the ef- mon knowledge [8]. This common knowledge in fact underlie ficiency of energy foraging, but nevertheless a functional fit- collective intelligence. ness of a swarm is limited. For instance, if the recharging 2. The second case appears when macroscopic capabilities station is separated from a working area by a small barrier, are defined by environmental feedback. The system builds a robots can never reach the energy source. However, if robots closed macroscopic feedback-loop, which works in a collec- aggregate into more complex high-level organism which can tive way as a distributed control mechanisms. In this case pass the barrier, they will reach the docking station. In there is no need of complex communication, agents inter- this way a cooperative organization of robotic system al- act only by kinetic means. This case if interaction is often lows an essential increase of functional capabilities for the denoted as a spatial reasoning, or spatial computing. whole group. The large integrated project ”REPLICATOR” 3. The third case of interactions we encounter in na- (www.replicatores.eu), funded by the European commission, ture, when some bacteria and fungi (e.g. dictyostelium dis- within the work programme ”Cognitive systems, interaction coideum) can aggregate into a multi-cellular organism when and robotics”, deals with such issues as reconfigurability of this provides better chances of survival [9]. In this way, sensors and actuators, adaptive control and learning strate- they interact not only through information exchange or spa- gies as well as working in real environments. tial interactions, they build the closest physical, chemical The cooperative (swarm-based or symbiotic) organization and mechanical interconnections, through the agents still of the robotic system provides essential plasticity of used remain independent from each other. hardware and software platforms. The robot organism will The first two cases of interactions are objects of extensive be capable of continuously changing its own structure and research in many domains: robotics, multi-agents systems, functionality. Such an evolve-ability opens many questions bio-inspired and adaptive community and so on. However about principles and aspects of long- and short-term ar- the practical research in the last case represents essential tificial evolution and controllability of artificial evolution- technological difficulties and therefore is not investigated ary processes. The large integrated project ”SYMBRION” enough. Despite the similarities between a robot swarm and (www.symbrion.eu), funded by European commission, within multi-robot organism, such as a large number of robots, fo- the work programme ”Future and Emergent Technologies”, cus on collective/emergent behavior, a transition between is focused on evolve-ability, dependability and artificial evo- them is a quite difficult step due to mechanical, electrical lution for such robot organisms based on bio-inspired and and, primarily, conceptual issues [10]. In the following sec- computational paradigms. Both projects are open-science tions we introduces corresponding challenges in more detail. and open-source. Now, we believe that research around the third case of Both projects, consortia and the European commission interactions is concentrated on four important questions: are closely cooperating to achieve the targeted goals. It is 1. Reconfigurability, adaptability and learn-ability of the expected that results of both projects create new technology symbiotic systems. These issues include flexible and multi- for making artificial robotic organisms self-configured, self- functional sensors and actuators, distributed computation, healing, self-optimizing and self-protecting from a hardware scalability, modelling, control and other issues, which are and software point of view. This leads not only to extremely closely related to the reconfigurable robotic research. The adaptive, evolve-able and scalable robotic systems, but also REPLICATOR project is focused on these points. enables the robot organisms to reprogram themselves with- 2. Evolve-ability of the symbiotic systems, which includes out human supervision, to develop their own cognitive struc- principles and aspects of long- and short-term artificial evo- tures and, finally, to allow new functionalities to emerge. lution and adaptivity as well as exploring and analogies to The rest of this paper is organized in the following way: biological systems. The SYMBRION project is focused on In Section 2 we discuss a new paradigm of symbiotic sys- these points. tems. Section 3 gives an example
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