Living machines

Contemporary research in science and engineering is seeking to harness the versatility and sustainability of living organisms. By exploiting natural principles, researchers hope to create new kinds of technology that are self-repairing, adaptable, and robust, and to invent a new class of machines that are perceptive, social, emotional, perhaps even conscious. This is the realm of the 'living machine'. Living machines can be divided into two types: biomimetic systems, that harness the principles discovered in nature and embody them in new artifacts, and biohybrid systems in which biological entities are coupled with synthetic ones.
Living Machines: A handbook of research in biomimetic and biohybrid systems surveys this flourishing area of research, capturing the current state of play and pointing to the opportunities ahead. Promising areas in biomimetics include self-organization, biologically inspired active materials, self-assembly and self-repair, learning, memory, control architectures and self-regulation, locomotion in air, on land or in water, perception, cognition, control, and communication. Drawing on these advances the potential of biomimetics is revealed in devices that can harvest energy, grow or reproduce, and in animal-like robots that range from synthetic slime molds, to artificial fish, to humanoids.Biohybrid systems is a relatively new field, with exciting and largely unknown potential, but one that is likely to shape the future of humanity. This book surveys progress towards new kinds of biohybrid such as robots that merge electronic neurons with biological tissue, micro-scale machines made from living cells, prosthetic limbs with a sense of touch, and brain-machine interfaces that allow robotic devices to be controlled by human thought.
The handbook concludes by exploring some of the impacts that living machine technologies could have on both society and the individual, exploring questions about how we will see and understand ourselves in a world in which the line between the natural and the artificial is increasingly blurred.
With contributions from leading researchers from science, engineering, and the humanities, this handbook will be of broad interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students. Researchers in the areas of computational modeling and engineering, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, artificial life, biorobotics, neurorobotics, and human-machine interfaces will find Living Machines an invaluable resource.

Tony Prescott is Professor of Cognitive Robotics at the University of Sheffield, UK, and Director of Sheffield Robotics, a cross-disciplinary research institute with over one hundred and fifty researchers (www.sheffieldrobotics.ac.uk). His background mixes psychology, neuroethology, and brain theory with robotics and artificial intelligence, and his research aims at answering questions about human nature by creating synthetic entities with capacities such as perception, memory, emotion, and sense of self. He is the co-creator of the mammal-like robots Scratchbot and Shrewbot, and is the co-founder of the UK company Consequential Robotics (www.consequentialrobotics.com ) that is developing assistive and companion robots including the animal-like robot 'pet' MiRo. He co-founded the International Living Machines conference series and also writes and speaks on societal and ethical issues in technology and the brain sciences.
Nathan Lepora is a Senior Lecturer in Engineering Mathematicss at the University of Bristol, UK, and leads the Tactile Robotics Theme at Bristol Robotics Laboratory. His research interests span robotics, neuroscience, and biomimetics, focusing on the design of novel 3D-printed dexterous tactile robotic hands and sensors that can intelligently perceive, explore, and manipulate their environment. His team's research is supported by EPSRC and a Leverhulme Leadership Award, has won several international awards in robotics, and is on display in the Science Museum, London. He has authored over 60 academic publications, edited several proceedings, including three Living Machines conference volumes, and also written eight books for children on science and technology.
Paul Verschure is a research professor with the Catalan Institute of Advanced Studies and Director of the Neuroengineering program at the Catalan Institute for Bioengineering. Paul trained in Psychology and his scientific aim is to find a unified theory of mind and brain using synthetic methods and to apply it to quality of life enhancing technologies. He has advanced a theory of mind and brain, Distributed Adaptive Control, which has led to a novel neurorehabilitation approach called the Rehabilitation Gaming System (eodyne.com). He also explores new methods for the exploration of complex data (brainx3.com) that is being tested on data from the human brain. Complementary to his science, Paul has developed and deployed over 25 art installations (http://specs.upf.edu/installations) from interactive spaces to BCI orchestras, robot Theremin soloists and virtual/augmented reality installations and tools for the holocaust memorial sites (futurememoryfoundation.org).

- Section I: Roadmaps - 1: Tony J. Prescott and Paul F. M. J. Verschure: Living Machines: an Introduction - 2: Paul F. M. J. Verschure and Tony J. Prescott: A Living Machines Approach to the Sciences of Mind and Brain - 3: Nathan F. Lepora, Paul Verschure, and Tony J. Prescott: A Roadmap for Living Machines - Section II: Life - 4: Tony J. Prescott: Life - 5: Stuart P. Wilson: Self-Organization - 6: I. A. Ieropoulos, P. Ledezma, G. Scandroglio, C. Melhuish, and J. Greenman: Energy and Metabolism - 7: Matthew S. Moses and Gregory S. Chirikjian: Reproduction - 8: Tony J. Prescott and Leah Krubitzer: Evo-devo - 9: Barbara Mazzolai: Growth and tropism - 10: Julian Vincent: Biomimetic Materials - 11: Josh Bongard: Modeling Self and Others - 12: Terrence W. Deacon: Towards a general theory of evolution - Section III: Building Blocks - 13: Nathan F. Lepora: Building blocks - 14: Piotr Dudek: Vision - 15: Leslie S. Smith: Audition - 16: Nathan F. Lepora: Touch - 17: Tim C. Pearce: Chemosensation - 18: Minoru Asada: Proprioception and Body Schema - 19: Frédéric Boyer and Vincent Lebastard: Electric Sensing for Underwater Navigation - 20: Iain A. Anderson and Benjamin M. O'Brien: Muscles - 21: Allen Selverston: Rhythms and Oscillations - 22: Changhyun Pang, Chanseok Lee, Hoon-Eui Jeong, and Kahp-Yang Suh: Skin and Dry Adhesion - Section IV: Capabilities - 23: Paul F.M.J. Verschure: Capabilities - 24: Holk Cruse and Malte Schilling: Pattern Generation - 25: Joel Z. Leibo and Tomaso Poggio: Perception - 26: Ivan Herreros: Learning and Control - 27: Ben Mitchinson: Attention and Orienting - 28: Nathan F. Lepora: Decision Making - 29: Ugur Murat Erdem, Nicholas Roy, John Joseph Leonard, and Michael E. Hasselmo: Spatial and Episodic Memory - 30: Mark R. Cutkosky: Reach, Grasp, and Manipulate - 31: Hartmut Witte, Martin S. Fischer, Holger Preuschoft, Danja Voges, Cornelius Schilling, and Auke Jan Ijspeert: Quadruped Locomotion - 32: Anders Hedenström: Flight - 33: Robert H. Wortham and Joanna J. Bryson: Communication - 34: Vicky Vouloutsi and Paul F. M. J Verschure: Emotions and Self-Regulation - 35: Paul F.M.J. Verschure: The Architecture of Mind and Brain - 36: Paul F.M.J. Verschure: A Chronology of Distributed Adaptive Control - 37: Anil K. Seth: Consciousness - Section V: Living machines - 38: Tony J. Prescott: Biomimetic Systems - 39: Christof Mast, Friederike Möller, Moritz Kreysing, Severin Schink, Benedikt Obermayer, Ulrich Gerland, and Dieter Braun: Towards Living Nanomachines - 40: Akio Ishiguro and Takuya Umedachi: From Slime Moulds to Deformable Bodies - 41: Barry Trimmer: Soft-bodied Terrestrial Invertebrates and Robots - 42: Roger D. Quinn and Roy E. Ritzmann: Applying Principles and Mechanisms Learned from Insects to Robotics - 43: Stefano Nolfi: Co-operation in Collective Systems - 44: Maarja Kruusmaa: From Aquatic Animals to Robot Swimmers - 45: Tony J. Prescott: Mammals and Mammal-like Robots - 46: Wolfgang Send: Winged artifacts - 47: Giorgio Metta and Roberto Cingolani: Humans and Humanoids - Section VI: Biohybrid Systems - 48: Nathan F. Lepora: Biohybrid Systems - 49: Girijesh Prasad: Brain-machine interfaces - 50: Stefano Vassanelli: Implantable Neural Interfaces - 51: Joseph Ayers: Biohybrid Robots are Synthetic Biology Systems - 52: Toshio Fukuda, Masahiro Nakajima, Masaru Takeuchi, and Yasuhisa Hasegawa: Micro and Nanotechnology for Living Machines - 53: Sliman J. Bensmaia: Biohybrid Touch Interfaces - 54: Torsten Lehmann and André van Schaik: Implantable Hearing Interfaces - 55: Dong Song and Theodore W. Berger: Hippocampal Memory Prostheses - Section VII: Perspectives - 56: Michael Szollosy: Perspectives - 57: James Hughes: Human Augmentation and the Age of the Transhuman - 58: Charles Lenay and Matthieu Tixier: From Sensory Substitution to Perceptual Supplementation - 59: Belén Rubio Ballester: Neurorehabilitation - 60: Abigail Millings and Emily C. Collins: Human Relationships with Living Machines - 61: Michael Szollosy: Living Machines in our Cultural Imagination - 62: Hannah Maslen and Julian Savulescu: The Ethics of Virtual Reality and Telepresence - 63: David J. Gunkel: Can Machines have Rights? - 64: Anna Mura and Tony J. Prescott: A Sketch of the Education Landscape in Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems - 65: José Halloy: Sustainability of Living Machines