Posted by Shivakumar Viswanathan on December 07, 2006 at 20:08:54:
Did anybody know that Hod had a paper in Science
last month?
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Resilient Machines Through Continuous Self-Modeling
Josh Bongard, Victor Zykov, Hod Lipson
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/314/5802/1118
Animals sustain the ability to operate after injury by creating
qualitatively different compensatory behaviors. Although such
robustness would be desirable in engineered systems, most machines
fail in the face of unexpected damage. We describe a robot that can
recover from such change autonomously, through continuous self-modeling.
A four-legged machine uses actuation-sensation relationships to
indirectly infer its own structure, and it then uses this self-model
to generate forward locomotion. When a leg part is removed, it adapts
the self-models, leading to the generation of alternative gaits. This
concept may help develop more robust machines and shed light on
self-modeling in animals.
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