[FRIAM] A distinguishing feature of living entities
Russ Abbott
russ.abbott at gmail.com
Mon May 29 13:38:27 EDT 2023
Thanks for the follow-up Steve,
Great videos!
-- Russ
On Mon, May 29, 2023 at 9:14 AM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>
> Russ -
>
> I also have a lot of life in my immediate environment, with a 1 year old
> puppy and kitty who grew up wrestling their way through the house and take
> one another's cues when it comes to alerting to the birds outside the
> window and the moths and flies who are silly enough to be available to
> these two little terrorists. The wild things also/moreso, not to mention
> the networks of relationships within a domus/guild/habitat/ecosystem.
>
> While watching my two little dogs run around our house, it struck me that
> a feature that distinguishes living from non-living entities is the
> apparent effortlessness with which living ones navigate the world. Imagine
> how difficult it would be to build a robot that could navigate the world so
> effortlessly. To make the comparison a bit simpler, imagine how difficult
> it would be to build a robotic cockroach.
>
>
> Mark Tilden's BEAM Robotics and Nervous Nets were pretty impressive in
> this regard back 20+ years ago:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BEAM_robotics
>
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921889003001520
>
>
> https://www.rssc.org/uploads/4/5/1/1/45118641/buildfest_handout_2006_06_10.pdf
>
> I'm not describing these to contradict your main point, rather to
> counter-point it? And then there is Theo Jansen's Strandbeest!
>
> https://www.strandbeest.com/
>
> There is something fascinating about autonomous "agents" operating outside
> the context of the von Neumann "Universal Computing" paradigm. I'm of the
> spirit to believe that collectives of interacting sub-universal-complexity
> elements can collectively execute Universal Computation.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_robotics
>
> Others here can speak *much* more directly to the arc of
> development/evolution of the SFI/Swarm.org work going back 30 ish years?
> (I don't know of any specific *hardware* instantiation/bridge beyond
> Tilden, et al's work, but there may well be). There is probably a swarm
> of tiny origami boats driven by surface-tension gradients somewhere in
> Sausalito Bay, doing performance art or perhaps plotting a world takeover?
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU76wwmg9Hs
>
> https://www.swarm.org/
>
>
> https://sfi-edu.s3.amazonaws.com/sfi-edu/production/uploads/sfi-com/dev/uploads/filer/8a/2a/8a2ae001-9ad5-43e6-b7e3-4d951223e9e8/96-06-042.pdf
>
> I started down the rabbit hole of a google search:
>
> and got overwhelmed with how popular the invocation of "Swarm" has
> become: Oh well.
>
> Strange Find in Australia: A dopplenymic artist - Christopher Langton:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ27Rphomsg
>
> and a wonderfully apropos-for-the-NFT-moment essay on Virtual Art which
> references Chris a lot:
>
>
> https://textinart.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/leonardo-oliver-grau-virtual-art_-from-illusion-to-immersion-2003-mit-press.pdf
>
>
> When I asked ChatGPT whether anyone has built a robotic cockroach, it
> came up with these examples. (I haven't checked to see whether these are
> real projects.)
>
>
> -
>
> DASH: The Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod (DASH) robot, developed
> at the University of California, Berkeley, was inspired by the rapid
> locomotion of cockroaches. It has six legs and can move quickly on various
> terrains using a simple control mechanism.
>
>
> -
>
> Harvard RoboBee: Although not specifically modeled after a cockroach,
> the Harvard RoboBee project aims to develop small, insect-like robots.
> These tiny flying robots are inspired by the mechanics and flight
> capabilities of insects and demonstrate similar agility and maneuverability.
>
>
> -
>
> iSprawl: The iSprawl robot, developed at the University of California,
> Berkeley, was inspired by cockroaches' ability to squeeze through small
> spaces. It uses a compliant body design and six legs to navigate tight and
> cluttered environments.
>
>
> -
>
> VelociRoACH: Developed at the University of California, Berkeley, the
> VelociRoACH is a fast-running robot designed to mimic the high-speed
> locomotion of cockroaches. It utilizes a legged design and has demonstrated
> impressive speed and agility.
>
> These mainly explore locomotion. Besides locomotion, cockroaches notice
> when someone enters an area where they are exposed. They quickly scuttle
> off to some hiding place. How do they sense the presence of a new being?
> How do they know where the hiding places are? How do they know how to move
> in the right direction? How do they know how to avoid small obstacles and
> fires? Etc.
>
> One can argue that these capabilities are hard-wired in. But that
> doesn't make it any easier. These are still capabilities they have, that
> would be a challenge to build.
>
> I became amazed at how well-connected living entities are to their
> environments. They quickly and easily extract and use information from
> their environment that is important to their survival.
>
> Man-made robots have nowhere near that level of embeddedness and
> environmental integration.
>
> Was it Rodney Brooks who said that we should build that sort of
> connectedness before worrying about building intelligence into our robots?
> Today that struck me as an important insight.
>
> I do agree that robotics/AI is a *long way* (but on a different
> time-metric than we are?) from "life as we know it" but some of the
> AI/Robot-dysphoria comes *from* the "as we know it" clause... which can be
> as benign as the "uncanny valley" experience to something on the order of a
> literal or merely *literary* "gray goo scenario".
>
>
> https://www.diggitmagazine.com/blog/generative-ai-and-uncanny-valley-and-call-action
>
>
> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/03/ai-chatgpt-writing-language-models/673318/
>
>
> Mumble,
>
> - Steve
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: 5/2017 thru present
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20230529/ecc9ffaa/attachment.html>
More information about the Friam
mailing list