Robots eating other robots: The benefits of machine metabolism

For decades, we have been trying to make robots more intelligent and more physically capable by imitating biological intelligence and movement. “But in doing so, we have simply reproduced the results of biological evolution – I say that we have to reproduce his methods,” says Philippe Wyder, developer in developing robotics at Columbia University. Wyder led a team that demonstrated a machine with a rudimentary form of what they call a metabolism.

He and his colleagues built a robot that could consume other robots to grow physically, become stronger, more capable and continue to work.

Nature methods

The idea of robotic metabolism combines various concepts in AI and robotics. The first is artificial life, which Wyder called “an area where people study the evolution of organisms through computer simulations”. Then there is the idea of modular robots: reconfigurable machines which can change their architecture by reorganizing the collections of basic modules. This was launched in the United States by Daniela Rus or Mark Yim at Carnegie Mellon University in the 1990s.

Finally, there is the idea that we need a passage of a design focused on the objectives that we have traditionally implemented in our machines to a design focused on survived in living organisms, which Magnus Egerstedt proposed in his book Robot ecology.

Wyder’s team has taken all these ideas, merged them and prototyped a robot that could “eat” other robots. “I came in a way from many different angles,” explains Wyder.

The main source of inspiration, however, was the way nature built its organizations. There are 20 standard amino acids universally used by life that can be combined in billions of proteins, forming the constituent elements of countless life forms. Wyder started his project by designing a basic robotic module which was intended to play a role almost equivalent to a single amino acid. This module, called the bond of the farm, looked like a rod, 16 centimeters long and containing batteries, electronic controllers and servomotors that allowed them to develop, contract and crawl in a straight line. They had permanent magnets at each end, which allowed them to connect to other stems and form light networks.