Computer scientist Thomas Schmickl on bio-inspired robotics, virtual embryogenesis, and symbiotic multi-robot organisms
We mainly investigate bio-inspired swarm algorithms and robot designs. For this, we observe natural organisms in our labor; we take known facts about their behaviors from literature and translate the „core“ of those behaviors into algorithms, which we then implement in our robots. Of course, we take especially interesting „swarm intelligent“ behaviors from animals. For example, we extracted the BEECLUST algorithm from the behaviors of young honeybees in complex temperature fields. These collective behaviors allow the bees to always pick out the spot with the best-suited temperature for aggregation (global optimum) from a set of other warm spots (local optima). The basic principles of interactions were extracted from videos made in our experiments with real bees and then transferred into a simple computer algorithm executed by swarms of autonomous robots, allowing these robots to find optimal spots in the environment collectively. BEECLUST is currently the most simple yet still quite a powerful swarm algorithm that exists. Such algorithms also need sensors and actuators on robots and also communication between robots to work. Thus we also investigate bio-inspired designs of those components together with our hardware partners. Remember, we are actually a biology department, so we usually work together with international partners that operate engineering departments (mechatronics, electronics, sensors, …).
We had several dozens of cubic robot modules (approx. 10x10x10cm), and each of them was an autonomous robot driving on tracks or screws. Each module also had a hinge to bend itself and four docking ports to physically connect to other modules (and also to undock). This way, the modules could form a swarm of cells that aggregate and dock to form a more complex robot organism of various shapes. For steering this „embryogenetic process, “ we developed a software called „Virtual Embryogenesis“ (aka “VE”, mainly worked with my colleague Dr. Ronald Thenius) which is inspired by the embryogenetic processes of Metazoans. In VE, the robots run a distributed model of biological embryogenesis, which is driven by gene activation that leads to the production of substances (morphogens) that diffuse and build gradients of concentrations throughout the body of the embryo. The local concentration of such morphogens then determines the activation or blockage of other genes. This system is a very complex cascade of genes-morphogen-genes interactions that can actually be seen as the real “program” that is guiding embryogenesis. In VE, the robots run a model of
I think we inspired many current research projects in multi-cellular robotics. The concepts developed in our older projects, I-SWARM, SYMBRION, and REPLICATOR, continued to live on and were further developed in a series of our own projects. For example, we went underwater with the robots in the project CoCoRo (the largest underwater robot swarm in the world) and in the current project subCULTron. With subCULTron, we will be the first one to apply an autonomous robot swarm of such a size (150+) in the real open world by monitoring the Venice lagoon. The current state of the art is that either large swarms are operated in controlled lab conditions or “swarms” of very few robots are operated in the wild. However, those out-of-the-lab installations are still semi-controlled and short-term. In subCULTron, we are going far beyond that: We plan to operate for long times (many days, weeks) with an almost 100% autonomous system. Also, our projects ASSISIbf and FloraRobotica, which use swarm algorithms together with real
Evolutionary computation has a problem with the complexity of behaviors it produces. For example, it is easy to evolve robot programs that do collision avoidance or simple target finding but very difficult to evolve more complex behaviors. Evolution tends to go for the simplest (cheapest) solution that is somehow good enough. Swarm robotics is building on simple things allowing us to construct more complex collective things from those simple ingredients. So evolutionary swarm robotics is a promising perspective as it is a win-win combination of swarm robotics and evolutionary computation. However, this field is rather unexplored yet, as it is difficult to establish the required setups. The most interesting flavor of evolutionary swarm robotics is using online onboard evolution on real robots. This means that the evolutionary algorithm is executed live in all robots in parallel. This is technically tricky as it demands good (decentralized) communication and also for long runtimes. The ultimate promising goal is to generate robot swarms that are dropped somewhere and that reconfigure and reprogram themselves according to the environmental situation at the target place without much a-priori knowledge of the situation there.
Deep-sea. Other planets and/or their moons.And funny/interesting/motivating toys.
As I described above, self-reconfiguring/self-programming/self-adapting robot swarms will be excellent tools for exploring unknown places with potentially harsh conditions. The most prominent examples are deep-sea habitats and extraterrestrial exploration. In the closer future, applications will be in environmental monitoring (like we are currently developing for the Venice lagoon). My personal experience after many, many exhibitions of our robot swarms is that they are very attractive for people who like to touch the robots and to interfere (thus to play) with the swarm. So there is a “toy factor” in it. This is why I expect swarm toys to come up soon, and people will start to play around and try to figure out what interesting things can be done by/with them, so there is also a science-education aspect in them.