Table Of ContentNathan F. Lepora Anna Mura
Holger G. Krapp Paul F. M. J. Verschure
Tony J. Prescott (Eds.)
Biomimetic
and Biohybrid Systems
Second International Conference, Living Machines 2013
London, UK, July/August 2013
Proceedings
123
LNAI 8064
Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 8064
Subseries of Lecture Notes in Computer Science
LNAI Series Editors
Randy Goebel
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
Yuzuru Tanaka
Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
Wolfgang Wahlster
DFKI and Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
LNAI Founding Series Editor
Joerg Siekmann
DFKI and Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
Nathan F. Lepora Anna Mura
Holger G. Krapp Paul F. M. J. Verschure
Tony J. Prescott (Eds.)
Biomimetic
and Biohybrid Systems
Second International Conference, Living Machines 2013
London, UK, July 29 – August 2, 2013
Proceedings
13
Volume Editors
Nathan F. Lepora
Tony J. Prescott
University of Sheffield, UK
E-mail: {n.lepora, t.j.prescott}@sheffield.ac.uk
Anna Mura
University of Pompeau Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
E-mail:
Preface
These proceedings contain the papers presented at Living Machines: The Second
International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, held in Lon-
don, UK, July 29 to August 2, 2013. This international conference is targeted
at the intersection of research on novel life-like technologies inspired by the sci-
entific investigation of biological systems, biomimetics, and research that seeks
to interface biological and artificial systems to create biohybrid systems. The
conference aim is to highlight the most exciting international research in both
of these fields united by theme of “living machines.”
The development of future real-world technologies will depend strongly on
our understanding and harnessing of the principles underlying living systems
and the flow of communication signals between living and artificial systems. The
development of either biomimetic or biohybrid systems requires a deep under-
standing of the operation of living systems, and the two fields are united under
the theme of “living machines” — the idea that we can construct artefacts, such
as robots, that not only mimic life but share the same fundamental principles, or
build technologies that can be combined with a living body to restore or extend
its functional capabilities.
Biomimetics can, in principle, extend to all fields of biological research from
physiology and molecular biology to ecology, and from zoology to botany. Promis-
ing research areas presented at the conference included system design and struc-
ture, self-organization and co-operativity, new biologically active materials, self-
assembly, learning, memory, control architectures and self-regulation, movement
and locomotion, sensory systems, perception, and communication. Biomimetic
research was also being seen to drive important advances in component minia-
turization, self-configuration, and energy-efficiency. A key focus of the confer-
ence was on complete behaving systems in the form of biomimetic robots that
can operate on different substrates on sea, on land, or in the air. A further
central theme was the physiological basis for intelligent behavior as explored
through neuromimetics — the modelling of neural systems. Exciting emerging
topics within this field include the embodiment of neuromimetic controllers in
hardware, termed neuromorphics, and within the control architectures of robots,
sometimes termed neurorobotics.
Biohybrid systems usually involve structures from the nano-scale (molecular)
through to the macro-scale (entire organs or body parts). Important examples
presented at the conference included: bio-machine hybrids where, for instance, bi-
ological muscle was used to actuate a synthetic device; brain–machine interfaces
where neurons and their molecular machineries are connected to microscopic
sensors and actuators by means of electrical or chemical communication, either
in vitro or in the living organism; intelligent prostheses such as artificial limbs,
wearable exoskeletons, or sensory organ-chip hybrids (e.g., cochlear implants and
VI Preface
Fig. 1. Living Machines 2013 themes. The most popular 150 terms taken from the
titles of papers are displayed in a word could. Evidently, terms such as robot, learning,
control, biohybrid, neural, brain, design and neuromorphic feature prominently
artificial retina devices). Biohybrid systems were also considered at the organism
level, including robot-animal and robot-human communities.
Leading conference themes are displayed with a word cloud in Fig. 1.
Five hundred years ago, Leonardo da Vinci designed a series of flying ma-
chines based on the wings of birds. These drawings are famous for their beauti-
ful, lifelike designs, created centuries before the Wright brothers made their first
flight. This inspiration from nature that Leonardo pioneered remains as crucial
for technology today as it was many centuries ago.
Leonardo’s inspiration was to imitate a successful biological design to solve
a scientific problem. Today, this subject area is known as biomimetics. The
American inventor Otto Schmitt first coined this term in the 1950s while trying
to copy how nerve cells function in an artificial device. He put together the Greek
words bios (life) and mimetic (copy) and the name caught on.
Why is nature so good at finding solutions to technological problems? The
answer lies in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Life, by the process of natural
selection, is a self-improving phenomenon that continually reinvents itself to
solve problems in the natural world. These improvements have accumulated
over hundreds of millions of years in plants and animals. As a result, there are a
myriad natural design solutions around us, from the wings of insects and birds
to the brains controlling our bodies.
Biomimetics and bio-inspiration has always been present in human tech-
nology, from making knives akin to the claws of animals. Curiously though,
there has been a dramatic expansion of the biomimetic sciences in the new
millennium. The same coordination initiative, the Convergent Science Network
(CSN) of biomimetic and biohybrid systems, that organized this and last year’s
Preface VII
Fig. 2. Growth of biomimetic research. The bar chart plots the number of papers
published each year in biomimetics starting from 1995. The black bars indicate the
proportion of journal papers and the white bars the proportion in books and conference
proceedings. Growth has been rapid since 2001 with no sign of it saturating. (Reprinted
with permission from Lepora, Verschure and Prescott, 2013: ‘The state of the art in
Living Machines’, Bioinspiration & Biomimetics 8: 013001)
conference on Living Machines, has also completed a survey on The State of
the Art in Biomimetics (Lepora, Verschure and Prescott, 2013). As part of the
survey, we counted how much work on biomimetics is published each year. This
revealed a surprising answer: from only tens of articles before the millennium, it
has exploded since then to more than a thousand papers each year (Fig. 2).
This huge investment in research inspired from nature is producing a wide
variety of innovative technologies. Examples include artificial spider silk that
is stronger than steel, super-tough synthetic materials based on the shells of
molluscs, and adhesive patches mimicking the padded feet of geckos. Medical
biomimetics is also leading to important benefits for maintaining health. These
include bionic cochlear implants for hearing, fully functional artificial hearts,
and modern prosthetic hands and limbs aimed at repairing the human body.
Looking to the future, however, the most revolutionary applications of bio-
mimetics will likely be based on nature’s most sophisticated creation: our brains.
From our survey of biomimetic articles, we found that a main research theme is
to take inspiration from how our brains control our bodies to design better ways
of controlling robots. This is for a good reason. Engineers can build amazing
robots that have seemingly human-like abilities. But really, no existing robot
comes close to copying the dexterity and adaptability of animal movements.
The missing link is the controlling brain.
VIII Preface
It is often said that future scientific discoveries are hard to predict. This is
not the case in biomimetics. There are plenty of examples surrounding us in the
natural world. The future will produce artificial devices with these abilities, from
mass-produced flying micro devices based on insects, to robotic manipulators
based on the human hand, to swimming robots based on fish. Less certain is
what they will do to our society, economy, and way of life.
The main conference, July 30 to August 1, took the form of a three-day
single-track oral and poster presentation programme that included five plenary
lectures from leading international researchers in biomimetic and biohybrid sys-
tems: Mark Cutkosky (Stanford University) on biomimetics and dextrous ma-
nipulation; Terence Deacon (University of California, Berkeley) on natural and
artificial selves; Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena (Imperial College, London) on
biomimetics for medical devices; Robert Full (University of California, Berke-
ley) on locomotion; and Andrew Pickering (University of Exeter) on the history
of Living Machines. There were also 20 regular talks and a 3-hour poster ses-
sion (afternoon of August 1) featuring approximately 50 posters. Session themes
included: biomimetic robotics; biohybrid systems including biological-machine
interfaces; neuromimetic systems; soft robot systems; active sensing in vision
and touch; social robotics and the biomimetics of plants.
The conference was complemented with two days of workshops and sym-
posia, on July 29 and August 2, covering a range of topics related to biomimetic
and biohybrid systems: the self and cognitive systems (Peter Ford Dominey
and Paul Verschure); learning from the plant kingdom to invent smart solutions
(Barbara Mazzolai and Lucia Beccai); neuromorphic models, circuits and emerg-
ing nano-technologies for real-time neural processing systems (Giacoma Indiveri
and Themistoklis Prodromakis); emergent social behaviors in biohybrid systems
(Jose Halloy, Thomas Schmickl and Stuart Wilson); and societal impacts of liv-
ing machines (Tony Prescott and Michael Szollosy).
The main meeting was hosted London’s Natural History Museum, a world-
famous center for the study of the natural world homing many scientifically and
historically important biological collections. Satellite events were held nearby at
Imperial College, London, and an exhibition of biomimetic robots, technology,
and art together with a poster session and banquet were hosted in the adjacent
Science Museum. These museum venues with their outstanding collections of
the natural world and technology were an ideal setting to host the second Living
Machines Conference.
We wish to thank the many people who were involved in making LM2013
possible. On the organizational side this included Gill Ryder. Artwork, including
the excellent conference poster (pictured), was provided by Martin Bedford.
Sytse Wierenga assisted with the production of the website. Organization for
the workshops was headed by Holger Krapp and for the exhibitions by Jen
Lewis and Stuart Wilson. We would also like to thank the authors and speakers
who contributed their work, and the members of the International Programme
Committee for their detailed and considered reviews. We are grateful to the five
keynote speakers who shared with us their vision of the future.
Preface IX
Finally, we wish to thank the sponsors of LM2013: The Convergence Science
Network for Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems (CSN) (ICT-248986), which is
funded by the European Union’s Framework 7 (FP7) programme in the area of
Future Emerging Technologies (FET), the University of Sheffield, the University
of Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, and the Instituci´o Catalana de Recerca i Estudis
Avanc¸ats (ICREA). Additional support was provide by the ICT Challenge 2
project EFAA (ICT-270490). Living Machines 2013 was also supported by the
IOP Physics journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, who this year will publish
a special issue of articles based on last year’s LM2012 best papers.
July 2013 Nathan F. Lepora
Anna Mura
Holger G. Krapp
Paul F.M.J. Verschure
Tony J. Prescott
X Preface
