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From rigid to soft to biological robots

How new materials are driving advances in the study of the embodied cognition

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Abstract

For much of the history of robotics, robots have been built from inert, inorganic, bulk material, such as metals, plastics, and ceramics. However, advances in materials science are driving the development of soft robots made from increasingly exotic but still inorganic materials. Similarly, synthetic biology has recently provided the ability to build ‘biobots’ completely from biological materials. This is driven new use cases for mobile robots, but it is also allowing new questions to be posed about how both body plan and neural control jointly facilitate the evolution of intelligent behavior.

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Acknowledgements

The work involved biobots discussed herein was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under Cooperative Agreement Number HR0011-18-2-0022, the Lifelong Learning Machines program from DARPA/MTO. The content of the information does not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the government, and no official endorsement should be inferred. Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. The metamaterials work was supported by the National Science Foundation under the DMREF program (award number: 2118810).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Vermont, Burlington, USA

    Josh Bongard

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  1. Josh Bongard
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Correspondence to Josh Bongard.

Additional information

This work was presented in part as a plenary speech at the joint symposium of the 28th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, the 8th International Symposium on BioComplexity, and the 6th International Symposium on Swarm Behavior and Bio-Inspired Robotics (Beppu, Oita, and Online, January 25–27, 2023).

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Bongard, J. From rigid to soft to biological robots. Artif Life Robotics 28, 282–286 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-023-00872-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-023-00872-0

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