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Robotics Technology

Morphological Computation: The Hidden Superpower of Soft-Bodied Robots 51

Posted by samzenpus from the going-soft dept.
Hallie Siegel writes: Ever wonder why most robots are built with hard bodies? It's because they are easier to control that way. But now researchers are embracing the complexities of soft bodies, by using their complex dynamics as an asset for solving some of the control computation, instead of using digital computation to solve it. Not surprisingly, many soft robots are inspired by nature. Researcher Helmut Hauser talks about his research in 'morphological computation', including OCTOPUS, a bio-inspired robotic silicon arm.
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Morphological Computation: The Hidden Superpower of Soft-Bodied Robots More

Morphological Computation: The Hidden Superpower of Soft-Bodied Robots

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  • First Tentacle! (Score:5, Funny)

    by MenThal ( 646459 ) on Friday September 11, 2015 @04:36AM (#50501327)

    We all know where this is heading...

  • pwm and motor loading (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Pulse width modulation (a train of short binary pulses that mimic an analog waveform) commonly rely upon the motors winding loading effect to "smooth" out the pulse-train and make a wave out of it. has this loading effect been quantified? (a speaker is also a sort of motor, and low-end electronics often use a pwm driving a small speaker instead of an amplified dac...) also a resister-ladder serves as a low-pass filter in lieu of a motor.
    are these type of effects utilized at all?

    • What the heck has this got to do with the article? The article is not concerned with the piss easy to model motor driven by "pulse width modulation" or anything so mundane. See that picture at the top? That is a balloon picking up a cup. A balloon. Model that with your little PID controller. This is talking about replacing all your silly actuators with their low degrees of freedom, and their pitiful centralised digital feedback controller, with a batshit insane pile networked springs (from a modelling vie
    • Yes these effects are well known and relatively commonplace in the world of system dynamics.

  • Non-linear control (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Puff_Of_Hot_Air ( 995689 ) on Friday September 11, 2015 @05:53AM (#50501467)
    This article is fascinating and also a bit surprising. Surprising that the engineering world is still trying to hang onto simplified digital linear control. The real world is non-linear and analog! Linear control makes things simple mathematically and deterministic, but it also extremely limiting. There is a reason that the natural world works in a fundamentally non-linear analog fashion, and that is because it's better. Want to know why mobile phones aren't the size of bricks anymore? It's because Chris Toumazou replaced all that clunky digital radio with vastly smaller more efficient analog circuits. It's also why deaf kids can get a fully embedded cochlea implant and not have to carry around a car battery. Digital is so last century people, it's time to embrace the analog renaissance!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Want to know why mobile phones aren't the size of bricks anymore?

      But, they are the size of bricks.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by delt0r ( 999393 )
      Err no. Just because its digital does not make it linear or anything else. We use digital because it just works better, and is cheaper and is less susceptible to noise. Just because it is digital does not mean it has to be a power hungry i7 or something.
      • Where did I suggest that linear control and digital control were one and the same? Digital has a range of benefits, but "power consumption" ain't one of em. You take a transistor which follows a beautiful exponential curve like much of the real world (especially biology) and crush all of that information into a 1 and a 0. We are not talking small power improvements by modelling these things in analog, we are talking several orders of magnitude improvements. And it's not just power consumption, how about res

        • Where did I suggest that linear control and digital control were one and the same?

          About here: "Surprising that the engineering world is still trying to hang onto simplified digital linear control."

          After that, you continue by associating analog with non-linearity: "The real world is non-linear and analog!"

          Your next mention of linearity implies digital as well because of the contrasts already set up by your previous statements: "Linear control makes things simple mathematically and deterministic, but it also extremely limiting."

          Whether or not you meant it that way, it suggests that digi

          • Well fair enough, I could have been clearer, but I was hoping to pitch this to people that had a basic knowledge of control theory. On reflection, this is probably too small a group. So to explain; the situation is actually somewhat reversed to the impression you have come away with. In the continuous domain (I.e. analog feedback) our mathematical models as used are only for linear systems. So if you have a non-linear system or response, you find a linear portion and stay within that range. But non-linear i
        • Digital does not "crush" things to a 0 or a 1. For example digital anolog "crushes" it into a 0 to a 65536 or even much larger. And no there is no order or anything improvement with analog. You are literally talking out of your Ass. You have no idea what your going on about. You probably made one of those BEAM [wikipedia.org] toys and believed you made a breakthrough. Yea they are cool. But they are not the future of robotics.
      • Also, cheaper? Cheaper to change, yes, but tell me again how a million transistors to do something an analog circuit can achieve with a handful is cheaper again?
        • I can buy a PIC or ARM controller cheaper than a transistor these days.
          • I'm not talking about discrete components; but why do I get the feeling you're not really interested?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by delt0r ( 999393 )
              Soo by cheaper you mean reconfig an entire VSLI assembly line to solve a single thing? You just gave new meaning to ridiculously expensive. Seriously put up or shut up. Show the proof of analog electronics superiority. You do know the BEAM guy never said it was superior either right.

              Fact is digital is cheaper, more robust and more flexible.

    • Want to know why mobile phones aren't the size of bricks anymore? It's because Chris Toumazou replaced all that clunky digital radio with vastly smaller more efficient analog circuits.

      I'm not really sure where you're getting this. The old, large cell phones were analog phones [wikipedia.org]. In DSP the goal is to get to digital as quickly as reasonable, because once the signal is digital, you no longer lose data.

      It seems like you read something interesting, I'm not sure what because you didn't link to it. You can't just generalize that analog is better in all situations though.........sometimes it's necessary for interfacing with nature: that's the only real advantage of analog.

      • Chris Toumazou, say it with me. Read the article. It is all about replacing umpteen different actuators and sensors and ludicrously complex control feedback with some springs and soft bits whose dynamic properties achieve the same function. Analog (mechanical). That's what "puppy"' is, extremely simple from the traditional control side of things, but the dynamic properties of the the materials mean that it affects a quadruped gate. All the tricky stuff is simply a by product of the material composition. Ho

        • Chris Toumazou, say it with me. Read the article.

          You haven't linked to an article, man. His Wikipedia article isn't giving much.

          • No I meant the article at the top of this page. It's all interrelated stuff, but the article here is all about soft robots (using the natural properties of the materials to perform complex control function), while Chris is all about analog electronics. Chris has several YouTube videos that are well worth a watch, and tons of published papers that are worth a read if you have access to the academic web.

            • YouTube videos that are well worth a watch, and tons of published papers that are worth a read if you have access to the academic web.

              It might be helpful for you to watch them again, that way you can more clearly describe what you are trying to say. Watching it a second time will improve your explaining ability.

    • This post is not interesting, it is vastly overrated.

      Surprising that the engineering world is still trying to hang onto simplified digital linear control.

      It's not remotely surprising. Most thinga are linear over some range, and the mathematical tools for dealing with nonlinear systems are much, much less advanced.

      The real world is non-linear and analog!

      The world is not so analog that it matters, and it's not like analog systems are lossless.

      There is a reason that the natural world works in a fundamentally

      • i appear to need to correct a misconception, I'm not referring to the original analogue phones, but the original digital variants. In addition, the first fully embedded cochlear implant is possible due to the work of Chris Toumazou and his team in the analog realm. Please show me a DSP you can imbed in someone's head.

        • i appear to need to correct a misconception, I'm not referring to the original analogue phones, but the original digital variants.

          Um OK. Provide some evidence then.

          In addition, the first fully embedded cochlear implant is possible due to the work of Chris Toumazou and his team in the analog realm.

          OK, do you have a link for that?

          Please show me a DSP you can imbed in someone's head.

          A cortex M0+ core is about 0.0066 mm^2, and clocks in at about 3.8uW/MHz. While not a dedicated DSP, it's still got a single cycl

        • It would appear that your username is a description of your brain.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khallow ( 566160 )
      An obvious rebuttal to the superiority of analog is the study of differential equations. Every classical analog circuit of finite extent (not counting effects of relativity or QM) can be expressed in terms of polynomial differential equations of one variable (polynomial in the function(s) and the variable). There are several observations to make at this point. First, linearized, digital numerical methods (eg, finite difference or finite elements methods) are vastly faster and more accurate even in the situa
      • You are looking at this from the wrong end (and I'm not disagreeing with anything you have written). We don't have the mathematical tools to model non-linear analog systems (like the 'puppy' robot in the article), but this is not stopping people from using them. In the article they describe a new approach from a mathematical modelling perspective. These robots are exploring completely nonlinear systems with infinite state space, and getting some pretty amazing results. It's just that until recently it's bee

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by khallow ( 566160 )

          We don't have the mathematical tools to model non-linear analog systems (like the 'puppy' robot in the article), but this is not stopping people from using them. In the article they describe a new approach from a mathematical modelling perspective. These robots are exploring completely nonlinear systems with infinite state space, and getting some pretty amazing results. It's just that until recently it's been more or less heuristic.

          I mentioned two such tools we do have. Variational calculus and differential geometry (as applied to control systems) are a couple more (both useful for reducing the dimensional complexity of the problems in the article). And I don't see an example of a "completely nonlinearizable" system mentioned in the article. They seem pretty mundane to be honest.

    • The real world is non-linear and analog!

      You know what else is non-linear? Time. [youtube.com]

  • I wonder if morphological computation [google.com] can solve prion folding [wikipedia.org].problems.

    If not an outright solution, such models may provide insight: "Soft is as soft does."

    Another thought:

    Perhaps these morpho-squishy computers can run competitive genetic algorithms [slashdot.org].

    Think Robot Wars [wikipedia.org] meets Fight Club [imdb.com].

    I would pay to see that.

    • Thank you for the first link, it is highly informative. But I am reaching, reaching, and failing to see how prion folding has anything to do with this whatsoever. Seriously dude, you might want to look into your medication. Not everything is related to prions...
  • I believe men everywhere have been embracing complex soft bodies since time immemorial...

  • Ever wonder why most robots are built with hard bodies? It's because they are easier to control that way.

    Did the person who came up with this drivel actually read what they wrote?? I suppose the reason we make dinner plates, vibrators and and Lockheed C-130's hard isn't because we don't possess the tech to make them out of pliable nanomaterials... but rather so that they'll be easier to control??

    LOL!

    • The reason all those things (well, except vibrators... just depends what kind you're referring to) are rigid is because rigid structures solve those problems very well. No one is saying rigid robots are bad -- they'll always be around for factories and such -- but if you're looking to replicate the sort of efficient, complex behaviors you see in the natural world, compliance and flexibility are key. There's a reason evolution has tended to generate semi-rigid morphologies: they are more robust in dealing wi

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