Living Machines
Brosl HasslacherTheoretical DivisionLos Alamos National LaboratoryLos Alamos, NM 87545, USA<bhass@lanl.gov>Mark W. TildenPhysics DivisionLos Alamos National LaboratoryLos Alamos, NM 87545, USA<mwtilden@lanl.gov>
Abstract
Our aim is to sketch the boundaries of a parallel track in the evolution of robotic formsthat is radically different from any previously attempted. To do this we will firstdescribe the motivation for doing so and then the strategy for achieving it. Along theway, it will become clear that the machines we design and build are not robots in anytraditional sense. They are not machines designed to perform a set of goal oriented tasks,or work, but rather to express modes of survivalist behavior: the survival of a mobileautonomous machine in an a priori unknown and possibly hostile environment. We useno notion of conventional "intelligence" in our designs, although we suspect some strangeform of that may come later. Our topic is survival oriented machines, and it turns outthat intelligence in any sophisticated form is unnecessary for this concept. For suchmachines, if life is provisionally defined as that which moves for its own purposes, thenwe are dealing with living machines and how to evolve them. We call these machinesbiomorphs (
BIO
logical
MORPH
ology), a form of parallel life.
Introduction to Biomorphic Machines
One difference between biological carbon based life forms and the mobile survivalmachines we will discuss are materials platforms, which can be metals, plastics, silicon-- a large variety of materials, but as we take these principles and descend in scale, itbecomes clear that we could use many of the ready made protein structures provided bymolecular cell biology for other purposes. We could in principle self-assemble this newmachine life out of carbon chemistry at the scale of the cell, using the cells' ingredients,power sources and ATP engines. Doing that would not recover cell-centered biology, butmanufacture novel, potentially useful life forms that have apparently escaped thenormal path of evolution.What is different about biomorphic machines from typical mobile platform designs isnot their materials base but how they are organized. They use a dynamical, non-symbolic internal world representation and compliant, bi-directional, interactiveresponse where the external world assumes a crucial role. In this they have much incommon with biological forms which is not accidental; these machines are designed alongbiological paradigms rather than on first principle notions of how such machines shouldbe organized. We take the viewpoint that such principles will have to be discovered byexperiment rather than postulated by pure reason. In a sense these machines are
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