EU project SYMBRION

In the project SYMBRION robots are "grown" from having individually moving cells aggregating in specific configurations and then physically docking to each other. This way a larger "robotic organism" can grow, and also reconfigure. Every individual robotic module in this organisms acts autonomously, just like a cell in your body. It can communicate with its neighboring cells only and it has actuators to deform itself with an internal hinge. This way the whole robotic organism can start to move, e.g., by crawling, but only if each individual robotic cell coordinates its local actions well with the others. Bio-inspired algorithms, taken from embryogenesis shape the organism formation process, while algorithms inspired from hormone interaction networks and from neural networks take over the control of the locomotion. These software systems allow evolutionary computation algorithms to find their own way to move the specific body, and nobody, no human programmer or operator, has to sit down and program behavioral programs for these robots.

The following section shows a collection of robotic organisms form the Symbrion project