Biologically Inspired Design for

(more) Scalable Robots

Cynthia Breazeal
MIT Media Lab
Robotic Life Group

CBA
Fall 2002

Robots Inspired by Nature

Robots as interesting complex systems

Similarity to animals

Consequences of having a real body

Real tasks in the real world --- cannot predict all interactions

Lessons learned from biological creatures

CBA Fall 2002

Increase physical complexity

Increase behavioral complexity
Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Inspiration from Insects

Exploit physical modularity

Complex robot made of simpler robots

Sensors
Actuation
Computation

Examples

CBA Fall 2002

Hannibal
Reconfigurable robots (Daniela Rus)
Design by Evolution

Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Adaptive, Distributed Control

reflective
deliberative

reactive

No homunculus

Decompose complex robot control problem to coordination

of several simpler control problems

Multi-joint coordination arises from interaction

Through physical interactions from world and body
Communication between simpler robot systems

Tolerant to external perturbations from tight coupling to real

world

CBA Fall 2002

Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Cruses Model for Insect Locomotion

CBA Fall 2002

Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Robust, Flexible Control

Smooth transitions for a

family of wave gait

Energy consumption
Speed
Stability

Extended to rough terrain

CBA Fall 2002

Robust & adaptive arm

coordination
Coupled neural oscillators
Exploit physical coupling

Extends to multiple tasks

Matt Williamson, MIT AI
Lab
Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Tolerant to physical failure

Fault tolerant to sensor and actuator

failure
Add internal assessment at perceptual
level
Low-level sense of all is well
Self monitoring within virtual sensors

Exploit complementary sensory

suites
Identify and use all working sensors
in perceptual result
Address sensor failure at this level
before effect of failure propagates

Leverage from distributed control to

readapt behavior
Adapt gait if catastrophic failure

CBA Fall 2002

Power stroke

Ground contact

Joint
angle

Angle
compress

Vertical
force

Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Inspiration from Ethology

reflective
deliberative

Lessons from insects

Modularity, self regulation, and
internal assessment at reactive level
Single goal: rough terrain locomotion

Lessons from Ethology

Inspiration from behavior of birds, fish,
mammals
Deliberative behavior
Survival in complex, sometimes
hostile world
Arbitrate behavior to serve multiple
goals

CBA Fall 2002

reactive

Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Motivation and Autopoesis

Degree of Hunger

Introduce internal assessment of wellbeing

Critical parameters essential to survival
stay within bounded range

Temperature
Energy level
Etc.

Self-regulatory system tied to survival

Flexibility arbitrate the satisfaction of

multiple goals
Dynamic prioritization of needs
Helps to orchestrate other systems
(resources) to address these needs

CBA Fall 2002

Bias attention (saliency)

Bias behavior selection (value)
Bias form of motor expression (intensity)

Hunger
Stuffed
Hunger

Ravenous

Old pizza at 4am

Awesome Cake after

big meal

Eat

Quality of
food
Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Affect & decision making

Promotes better decision making and learning

Emotion theorists people make poor decisions concerning their welfare without emotions
Marvin Minskys The Emotion Machine
Roz Picards Affective Computation

Two complementary systems for systems that must perform tasks in dynamic,
unpredictable, and sometimes hostile world.

Cognition interprets and makes sense of the world

Affect evaluates and judges

Modulates operating parameters of cognition

Negative leads to depth first (tunnel vision, increased vigilance)
Positive leads to breadth first (creativity, increased curiosity)
Provides warning of possible dangers

Deeply intertwined!
Handle the unexpected problems

Affect introduces another kind of assessment system

A value system with respect to the creature

Assess whether something is

Good or bad for me?

Hospitable or harmful to me?
Desirable or undesirable for me, etc?

Sets expectations as to whether something is potentially problematic to guide

CBA Fall 2002 behavior

Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Emotion & decision making

Emotion introduces another kind of self-regulation system

Serves of orchestrate other systems to alter goals and their priority

Basic emotions honed for survival

Attention,
Memory,
Arousal,
Behavior & decision making,
Learning, etc.
When to explore
When to persevere or give up
When to escape from a dangerous situation
When to confront, etc.

But, provides another motivation system not strictly tied to survival

CBA Fall 2002

Social
The more social the species, the more intelligent, emotional, and expressive
Humans being the most

Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Emotion & Communication with Others

Emotion and its expression serves as a

fundamental communication system
Makes your behavior more
predictable and explainable by
others
Apply their Theory of Mind/folk
psychology
Empathy and feeling felt
Regulatory system of self in the context
of others
ups the ante of complexity of
interaction
Now, others act on you as well
Cannot directly manipulate others,
must socially influence
Mutually regulatory --- a dance.

CBA Fall 2002

Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Communicative Affective Intent

Communication through shared

affective state
CBA Fall 2002

Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Issues in Learning Something New

Issues for learning systems

Knowing what matters

Knowing what action to try
Evaluating actions
Correcting errors
Recognize success
Structuring learning

For robots, these are addressed in design of

learning architecture, algorithm for known task
But what if want to learn something that the
system has not been designed to learn?

CBA Fall 2002

Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Natural Learners

Animals are sensible learners

Learning occurs within an

environmental, behavioral, and
motivational context
Animals address the issues of

CBA Fall 2002

Learn what they ought to learn

When they ought to learn it

Who to learn from?

What to learn?
Where to learn?
When to learn?
How to learn?
Why learn and for what purpose?

Reflective element to learning

processes
Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Better Learners, Better Teachers

Learn on its own

Learn in partnership with person

Humans are natural & motivated

teachers
Guide exploration to accelerate
learning

Rewarding to teach

Constraint from innate endowments

Sensible attempts given feedback

Transparent behavior
Learns sufficiently quickly
Show eager & interested

View learning and teaching as a

coupled system

CBA Fall 2002

Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Curious machines

reflective
deliberative

Curious machines ground learning in

behavioral and motivational context

reactive

Reflect upon its own learning process

Pro-active, self motivated learners
Transparent behavior and feedback
Leverage from teaching to guide exploration

Persistent Personal Assistant

Robot as partner, not tool

CBA Fall 2002

Breazeal
Robotic Life Group

Principles of biologically inspired design

From insectoids to humanoids, biology

inspires
Lessons in scaling

Modularity of simpler interacting

systems
Internal assessment
Self regulation mechanisms

From reactive to deliberative to reflective

systems

reflective

Design principles

managing physical complexity

managing behavioral complexity

deliberative
reactive

Different mechanisms & systems at each

level
Themes hold at multiple levels of
description

CBA Fall 2002

Breazeal
Robotic Life Group