Artificial symbiosis in EcoBots

Abstract

Truly autonomous robotic systems will be required to abstract energy from the environment in order to function. Energetic autonomy refers to the ability of an agent, to maintain itself in a viable state for long periods of time. Its behaviour must be stable in order not to yield to an irrecoverable debt in any vital resource, i.e. it must not cross any of its lethal limits [1, 2]. With this in mind, our long-term goal is the creation of a robot, which can collect energy for itself. This energy must come from the robot's environment and must be sufficient to carry out tasks, which require more energy than that available at the start of the mission. In this respect our definition of an autonomous robot is more akin to Stuart Kauffman's definition of an autonomous agent, a self-reproducing system able to perform at least one thermodynamic work cycle [3] - but without the burden of self-reproduction! Building automata is certainly not something new. The first recorded example of an automaton dates back to the first century A.D. when Heron of Alexandria constructed a self-moving cart driven by a counter weight attached to the wheel base [4]. In more recent times, there are of course, some real robots, which already comply with this definition. For example, robots such as NASA's 'Spirit' [5] employ solar panels to power their explorations of Mars and have demonstrated their impressive ability to be self-sustaining. However, there will be numerous domains in which solar energy will not be available such as in underwater environments, sewers or when constrained to operate only in the dark. We are, therefore, interested in a class of robot system, which demonstrates energetic autonomy by converting natural raw electron-rich organic substrate (such as plant or insect material) into power for essential elements of robotic behaviour including motion, sensing and computation. This requires an artificial digestion system and concomitant artificial metabolism or, as in the case of EcoBots-I and -II, a rapprochement between an engineered artefact and a biological system - the robot symbiot. © 2009 Springer London.