Consider an approach to creating robots that's inspired not by maps but by the simple sense-and-act behavior of animals. You'll learn the benefits of behavior-based robotic architecture (including quicker reactions and stronger sensors), and see how simple animals including ants have inspired roboticists to build fascinating inventions.

This exciting study explores the novel insight, based on well-established ethological principles, that animals, humans, and autonomous robots can all be analyzed as multi-task autonomous control systems.

Scientists and engineers study and learn from nature to help solve problems and improve the world. Learn how biomimics has contributed to robotics. This title supports NGSS for Engineering Design.

Robotic animals are nowadays developed for various types of research, such as bio-inspired robotics, biomimetics and animal behavior studies. More specifically, in the case of collective animal behavior research, the robotic device can interact with animals by generating and exploiting signals relevant for social behavior. Once perceived by the animal society as conspecific, these robots can become powerful tools to study the animal behaviors, as they can at the same time monitor the changes in behavior and influence the collective choices of the animal society. In this book, we present novel robotized tools that can integrate shoals of fish in order to study their collective behaviors. We used the current state of the art on the zebrafish social behavior to define the specifications of the robots, and we performed stimuli analysis to improve their developments. Bio-inspired controllers were designed based on data extracted from experiments with zebrafish for the robots to mimic the zebrafish locomotion underwater. Experiments involving mixed groups of fish and robots qualified the robotic system to be integrated among a zebrafish shoal and to be able to influence the collective decisions of the fish. These results are very promising for the field of animal-robot interaction studies, as we showed the effect of the robots in long-duration experiments and repetitively, with the same order of response from the animals.

The book presents an overview of current research on biologically inspired autonomous robotics from the perspective of some of the most relevant researchers in this area. The book crosses several boundaries in the field of robotics and the closely related field of artificial life. The key aim throughout the book is to obtain autonomy at different levels. From the basic motor behavior in some exotic robot architectures right through to the planning of complex behaviors or the evolution of robot control structures, the book explores different degrees and definitions of autonomous behavior. These behaviors are supported by a wide variety of modeling techniques: structural grammars, neural networks, and fuzzy logic and evolution underlies many of the development processes. Thus this text can be used by scientists and students interested in these areas and provides a general view of the field for a more general audience.

This pioneering text explores the emerging discipline of ethorobotics which brings together the fields of animal behaviour and robotics.

For readers of The Second Machine Age or The Soul of an Octopus, a bold, exciting exploration of how building diverse kinds of relationships with robots—inspired by how we interact with animals—could be the key to making our future with robot technology work There has been a lot of ink devoted to discussions of how robots will replace us and take our jobs. But MIT Media Lab researcher and technology policy expert Kate Darling argues just the opposite, suggesting that treating robots with a bit of humanity, more like the way we treat animals, will actually serve us better. From a social, legal, and ethical perspective, she shows that our current ways of thinking don’t leave room for the robot technology that is soon to become part of our everyday routines. Robots are likely to supplement—rather than replace—our own skills and relationships. So if we consider our history of incorporating animals into our work, transportation, military, and even families, we actually have a solid basis for how to contend with this future. A deeply original analysis of our technological future and the ethical dilemmas that await us, The New Breed explains how the treatment of machines can reveal a new understanding of our own history, our own systems, and how we relate—not just to nonhumans, but also to one another.