Guided Self-Organization in a Dynamic Embodied System Based on Attractor Selection Mechanism

Abstract

Guided self-organization can be regarded as a paradigm proposed to understand how to guide a self-organizing system towards desirable behaviors, while maintaining its non-deterministic dynamics with emergent features. It is, however, not a trivial problem to guide the self-organizing behavior of physically embodied systems like robots, as the behavioral dynamics are results of interactions among their controller, mechanical dynamics of the body, and the environment. This paper presents a guided self-organization approach for dynamic robots based on a coupling between the system mechanical dynamics with an internal control structure known as the attractor selection mechanism. The mechanism enables the robot to gracefully shift between random and deterministic behaviors, represented by a number of attractors, depending on internally generated stochastic perturbation and sensory input. The robot used in this paper is a simulated curved beam hopping robot: a system with a variety of mechanical dynamics which depends on its actuation frequencies. Despite the simplicity of the approach, it will be shown how the approach regulates the probability of the robot to reach a goal through the interplay among the sensory input, the level of inherent stochastic perturbation, i.e., noise, and the mechanical dynamics.

What Is Morphological Computation? On How the Body Contributes to Cognition and Control

“…Also, all the examples of locomotion (quadruped Puppy and fish Wanda) and grasping (Yokoi hand) cited in [63] belong here. Other fitting representatives would be the pneumatic actuators embedded in elastomers that can move and grip [35], and the switching of behaviors exploiting attractors in the mechanical system in [59]. In all these cases the body is ingeniously contributing to the task; it enables physical behavior in the real world.…”

Soft Robotics Education

“…Furthermore, the principle of embodied intelligence has also been shown by using the aforementioned curved-beam hopping robot 22,23 ; that is, the robot exploits its material properties and capacities to interact with the environment to perform goal-directed locomotion. 24 Despite their accessibility and availability, the soft robotics technologies have not yet been exploited for educational purposes with some notable exceptions. Table 1 summarizes the aforementioned soft robotics technologies for use in education, and it particularly focuses on the following aspects: the possible target audiences of the education process, related concepts that can be taught, the benefits of each technology, and whether use of the technology for educational purpose has been reported in scientific publications.…”

“…(d) Curved-beam robot 22,23 : a robot that utilizes the principle of embodied intelligence; that is, it exploits its material properties and capacities to interact with the environment to partially embed the control in the body morphology. 24 Images: (a) www.voxcad.com. (b) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 3D_printing.…”

“…An example was shown in the so-called curved-beam hopping robots that make use of elastic property of curved beams to achieve diverse gait patterns of legged locomotion. [22][23][24] These robot bodies consist of aluminum curved beams that enable the system to exhibit elastic system dynamics. By controlling a simple DC motor mounted on the top of the beam, each robot can perform diverse locomotion gait patterns, for example, hopping and sliding.…”

Entropy Methods in Guided Self-Organisation

“…A novel internal control structure for a robot, considered as a general dynamic embodied system, is also investigated in the paper by Nurzaman et al [47]. This study presents a GSO approach based on a coupling between the mechanical dynamics of the robot and its internal control structure, known as the attractor selection mechanism [48].…”