Biorobotic Experiments for the Discovery of Biological Mechanisms

Abstract

Robots are being extensively used for the purpose of discovering and testing empirical hypotheses about biological sensorimotor mechanisms. We examine here methodological problems that have to be addressed in order to design and perform “good” experiments with these machine models. These problems notably concern the mapping of biological mechanism descriptions into robotic mechanism descriptions; the distinction between theoretically unconstrained “implementation details” and robotic features that carry a modeling weight; the role of preliminary calibration experiments; the monitoring of experimental environments for disturbing factors that affect both modeling features and theoretically unconstrained implementation details of robots. Various assumptions that are gradually introduced in the process of setting up and performing these robotic experiments become integral parts of the background hypotheses that are needed to bring experimental observations to bear on biological mechanism descriptions.

Morphological change in machines accelerates the evolution of robust behavior

“…To date, however, limited success has been achieved in realizing machines that continually perform simple yet robust behaviors in unstructured environments. It is contended here that this is due to overemphasis on the proximate mechanisms (1) of adaptive behavior-copying specific morphological and neuromorphological detail from organisms of interest into robots (2) in the hopes of replicating their behavior-and too little emphasis on the ultimate mechanisms of behavior-replicating the ontogenetic processes and selection pressures that gave rise to the behavior initially.…”

Large-scale simulations of brain mechanisms: beyond the synthetic method

“…Otherwise, one may be induced to reject that hypothesis. Under a variety of epistemological and methodological assumptions, whose analysis is out of the scope of this contribution (see Cordeschi, 2002Cordeschi, , 2008Webb, 2006;Datteri and Tamburrini, 2007;Datteri, 2016), the synthetic method may therefore assist one in identifying the mechanism underlying a particular (observed) behaviour. This may be called a model-oriented use of simulations.…”

“…This notional example illustrates another way in which model-based simulation studies can integrate already available knowledge on the brain, the term "integration" here implying the filling of gaps in a mechanism description that, as a result, becomes fully effective in explaining the target behaviour. An example is the biorobotics study on rat navigation described in Burgess et al (2000), in which robotic behaviours have been taken as a basis to believe in the existence of so-called "goal cells", never discovered in the rat at the time of publication of that work, but whose functional role must be instantiated in the robotic system for the latter to generate the behaviour under investigation (see Datteri and Tamburrini, 2007 for a discussion).…”

Simulation experiments in bionics: a regulative methodological perspective

“…Approaches based on computer simulations of biological hypotheses have been occasionally pursued in artificial intelligence (Amit 1998). More recently, robotic simulations have been involved in experimental studies on adaptive biological behaviours (Datteri and Tamburrini 2007;Webb and Consi 2001). Bionic technologies are now paving the way to new generations of machines, featuring closer integration between artificial and biological systems.…”