Morphogenetic Robotics: A New Paradigm for Designing Self-Organizing, Self-Reconfigurable and Self-Adaptive Robots

Abstract

By morphogenetic robotics, we mean a class of methodologies for de- signing self-organizing, self-recon gurable and self-adaptive robots inspired by bio- logical morphogenesis. We categorize these methodologies into three areas, namely, morphogenetic swarm robotic systems, morphogenetic modular robots and morpho- genetic co-design of body and brain for robots. We also discuss the relationship between morphogenetic robotics and a few closely related areas in robotics, such as epigenetic robotics that focuses on cognitive development in robotic systems and evo- lutionary robotics that is concerned with evolutionary design of robot controllers. A few examples are provided to illustrate the main ideas underlying the morphogenetic approaches to robotics.