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Simple or Complex Bodies? Trade-offs in Exploiting Body Morphology for Control

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Representation and Reality in Humans, Other Living Organisms and Intelligent Machines

Part of the book series: Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics ((SAPERE,volume 28))

Abstract

Engineers fine-tune the design of robot bodies for control purposes; however, a methodology or set of tools is largely absent, and optimization of morphology (shape, material properties of robot bodies, etc.) is lagging behind the development of controllers. This has become even more prominent with the advent of compliant, deformable or ‘soft’ bodies. These carry substantial potential regarding their exploitation for control—sometimes referred to as ‘morphological computation’. In this article, we briefly review different notions of computation by physical systems and propose the dynamical systems framework as the most useful in the context of describing and eventually designing the interactions of controllers and bodies. Then, we look at the pros and cons of simple versus complex bodies, critically reviewing the attractive notion of ‘soft’ bodies automatically taking over control tasks. We address another key dimension of the design space—whether model-based control should be used and to what extent it is feasible to develop faithful models for different morphologies.

This article is a substantially revised version of [20].

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Acknowledgements

M.H. was supported by the Czech Science Foundation under Project GA17-15697Y and by the Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship iCub Body Schema (625727) within the 7th European Community Framework Programme. M.H. also thanks Juan Pablo Carbajal for fruitful discussions and pointers to literature. Both authors thank the EUCogIII project (FP7-ICT 269981) for making us talk to each other.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Department of Cybernetics, Czech Technical University in Prague, Karlovo Namesti 13, 121 35 Prague 2, Prague, Czech Republic

    Matej Hoffmann

  2. iCub Facility, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Morego 30, 16163, Genoa, Italy

    Matej Hoffmann

  3. Anatolia College/ACT, PO Box 21021, 55510, Pylaia, Greece

    Vincent C. Müller

  4. Department of Philosophy, IDEA Centre, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Vincent C. Müller

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  1. Matej Hoffmann
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Correspondence to Matej Hoffmann .

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  1. Gothenburg, Sweden

    Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic

  2. Faculty of Philosophy, Pontifical Lateran University, Vatican City, Italy

    Raffaela Giovagnoli

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Hoffmann, M., Müller, V.C. (2017). Simple or Complex Bodies? Trade-offs in Exploiting Body Morphology for Control. In: Dodig-Crnkovic, G., Giovagnoli, R. (eds) Representation and Reality in Humans, Other Living Organisms and Intelligent Machines. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 28. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43784-2_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43784-2_17

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