AN INTRODUCTION TO BIO-INSPIRED ROBOT DESIGN

After half a century of research and development, our requirements as far as robots are concerned now seem clear. People want robots to be mobile, intelligent, autonomous, able to cooperate with man and other machines, and to act within the world according to our wishes. Of course, that aim has still to be reached, and the means to reaching it cannot arise ex nihilo from the researcher's brain. However, one possible solution could be to take a look at the world around us and to ask ourselves the following question: are there, in the world, any entities that possess the characteristics we are looking for in robots? Indeed, there are billions of these entities. They are living beings in general, and animals and man in particular. Although bio-inspiration for robot design is not a new issue, it would appear that very few works have addressed the basic issues that might enable us to exploit this source of inspiration to the full. This paper aims to set out some basic premises which could then help designers to find adequate solutions. We should point out that, although the ideas presented in this paper come from observation and knowledge about living beings, the aim is neither to make living robots, nor to make an artificial real animal, and even less to make an artificial human. The goal consists in identifying the most important features of living beings that could be used to meet our requirements in the matter of robot design. It is obvious, moreover, that these needs or demands are not static, but may change according to the pace of new technological and scientific achievements. On the other hand, needs as far as robots are concerned may be formulated in terms of human (or animal) appearance, of mental and physical concerns or behavior, and not at all in terms of human (or animal) reality. Finally, the basic issue comes down to this: what "parts" of humans can be transferred to machines, and do these "parts" correspond to what is required nowadays of robots?