Search

Generally, phenomena of spontaneous pattern formation are random and repetitive, whereas elaborate devices are the deterministic product of human design. Yet, biological organisms and collective insect constructions are exceptional examples of complex systems that are both architectured and self-organized. Can we understand their precise self-formation capabilities and integrate them with technological planning? Can physical systems be endowed with information, or informational systems be embedded in physics, to create autonomous morphologies and functions? This book is the first initiative of its kind toward establishing a new field of research, Morphogenetic Engineering, to explore the modeling and implementation of “self-architecturing” systems. Particular emphasis is set on the programmability and computational abilities of self-organization, properties that are often underappreciated in complex systems science—while, conversely, the benefits of self-organization are often underappreciated in engineering methodologies.

This paper describes robotstadium: an online simulation contest based on the new RoboCup Nao Standard League. The simulation features two teams with four Nao robots each team, a ball and a soccer field corresponding the specifications of the real setup used for the new RoboCup Standard League using the Nao robot. Participation to the contest is free of charge and open to anyone. Competitors can simply register on the web site and download a free software package to start programming their team of soccer-playing Nao robots. This package is based on the Webots simulation software, the URBI middleware and the Java programming language. Once they have programmed their team of robots, competitors can upload their program on the web site and see how their team behaves in the competition. Matches are run every day and the ranking is updated accordingly in the "hall of fame". New simulation movies are made available on a daily basis so that anyone can watch them and enjoy the competition on the web. The contest is running online for a given period of time after which the best ranked competitors will be selected for a on-site final during the next RoboCup event. This contest is sponsored by The RoboCup federation, Aldebaran Robotics, Cyberbotics and Gostai. Prizes includes a Nao robot, a Webots package and a URBI package.

This paper describes Rat’s Life: a complete cognitive robotics benchmark that was carefully designed to be easily reproducible in a research lab with limited resources. It relies on two e-puck robots, some LEGO bricks and the Webots robot simulation software. This benchmark is a survival game where two robots compete against each other for resources in an unknown maze. Like the rats in cognitive animal experimentation, the e-puck robots look for feeders which allow them to live longer than their opponent. Once a feeder is reached by a robot, the robot draws energy from it and the feeder becomes unavailable for a while. Hence, the robot has to further explore the maze, searching for other feeders while remembering the way back to the first ones. This allows them to be able to refuel easily again and again and hopefully live longer than their opponent. ...

Rewriting system (RS) are a formalism widely used in computer science. However, such a formalism can also be used to specify executable models of dynamical systems (DS) by allowing the specification of the evolution laws of the systems in a local manner. The main drawback of RS is that they are well understood and well known only for terms (a tree-like structure) and that their expressivity is not enough for the representation of complex organizations that can be found in DS. We propose a framework based on topological notion to extend the notion of RS on more sophisticated structures; the corresponding concepts are validated through the development of an experimental programming language, MGS, dedicated to the simulation of DS. We show how the MGS rewriting system can be used to specify complex dynamical systems and illustrate it with the simulation of the motility of the nematode's sperm cell.

In this paper, we propose a topological metaphor for computations: computing consists in moving through a path in a data space and making some elementary computations along this path. This idea underlies an experimental declarative programming language called MGS. MGS introduces the notion of topological collection: a set of values organized by a neighborhood relationship. The basic computation step in MGS relies on the notion of path : a path C is substituted for a path B in a topological collection A. This step is called a transformation and several features are proposed to control the transformation applications. By changing the topological structure of the collection, the underlying computational model is changed. Thus, MGS enables a unified view on several computational mechanisms. Some of them are initially inspired by biological or chemical processes (Gamma and the CHAM, Lindenmayer systems, Paun systems and cellular automata).

This paper presents Webots: a realistic mobile robot simulator allowing a straightforward transfer to real robots. The simulator currently support the Khepera mobile robot and a number of extension turrets. Both real and simulated robots can be programmed in C language using the same Khepera API, making the source code of a robot controller compatible between the simulator and the real robot. Sensor modelling for 1D and 2D cameras as well as visualisation and environment modelling are based upon the OpenGL 3D rendering library. A file format based on an extension of VRML97, used to model the environments and the robots, allows virtual robots to move autonomously on the Internet and enter the real world. Current applications include robot vision, artificial life games, robot learning, etc.

This paper presents the implementation of the panoramic, linear, artificial retina EDI within the frame of the Webots mobile-robotics simulator. The structure and functioning of the simulation are presented. Realistic sensor readings and software compatibility are the two key concerns of the simulator. A realistic sensor output is obtained by modelling the physical processes underlying the sensors. Interface compatibility between the real and simulated retina has been made possible through the use of the Khepera API. The simulator is validated by running a control algorithm developed on a real robot equipped with such a vision sensor and obtaining the same behavior.

Recursive definition of streams (infinite lists of values) have been proposed as a fundamental programming structure in various fields. A problem is to turn such expressive recursive definitions into an efficient imperative code for their evaluation. One of the main approach is to restrict the stream expressions to interpret them as a temporal sequence of values. Such sequential stream rely on a clock analysis to decide at what time a new stream value must be produced. In this paper we present a denotational semantics of recursively defined sequential streams. We show how an efficient implementation can be derived as guarded statements wrapped into a single imperative loop.

This paper describes an evolutionary process producing dynamical neural networks used as “brains” for autonomous agents. The main concepts used: genetic algorithms, morphogenesis process, artificial neural networks and artificial metabolism, illustrate our conviction that some fundamental principles of nature may help to design processes from which emerge artificial autonomous agents. The evolutionary process presented here is applied to a simulated autonomous robot. The resulting neural networks are then embedded on a real mobile robot. We emphasize the role of the artificial metabolism and the role of the environment which appear to be the motors of evolution. The first results observed are encouraging and motivate a deeper investigation of this research area.

L Systems are a mathematical formalism originally designed to model the biological growth of plants. They are based upon a parallel rewriting mechanism. We show in this paper that there exists an equivalence between the class of D0L Systems and a particular construction of programs in the 8 1/2 declarative data-parallel language.

The main motivation of 8 1/2 is to develop a high-level language that supports the parallel simulation of dynamical processes [1, 2]. To achieve this goal, a new data-structure, that merges the concept of stream and collection is introduced in a declarative framework. After a brief description of 8 1/2 basics, we describe the introduction of dynamicity and symbolic values in the language. We focus on the expressivity and issues brought by the new dynamic possibilities of the language and show, through several paradigmatic examples, that our computation model is able to support parallel symbolic processing.