12 April 2023
Locomotion is a crucial ability for micro-scale systems, particularly in applications that involve the transportation of cargos, or self-assembling in pre-programmed architectures. The ability to produce micro-scale systems composed of multi-cellular units, and functionalise them, have seen several advancements in recent years.
Morphological factors, that is, specific form or structure of a robot or group of robots, often play a crucial role in determining the behaviour of micro-systems, yet understanding how to design these aspects optimally is a challenge. Exploring the potential abilities of reactive, micro-scale systems in simulation is a vital first step towards eventually deploying new micro-robots in real-world applications.
In this work, EMERGE partners from the University of Bristol and collaborators explore how the morphology of a multi-cellular micro-robotic agent can be optimised for reliable locomotion using artificial evolution in a stochastic environment. By considering a system of micro-scale cellular units that can expand and contract in response to a light-based stimulus, the authors begin by establishing the theoretical mechanisms that would allow for collective locomotion to emerge from contractile actuations in multiple connected cells.
These principles are used to develop a Cellular Potts model to explore the locomotive performance of morphologies in simulation. Evolved morphologies yield significantly better performance in terms of the reliability of the travel direction and the distance covered, compared to random morphologies. Finally, the authors demonstrate that patterns in evolved morphologies are robust to small imperfections and generalise well to larger morphologies.
Source: Uppington, M., Gobbo, P., Hauert, S. et al. Evolving and generalising morphologies for locomoting micro-scale robotic agents. J Micro-Bio Robot 18, 37–47 (2022). DOI: 10.1007/s12213-023-00155-8
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