Morphogenetic Engineering: Reconciling Self-Organization and Architecture

Abstract

Generally, phenomena of spontaneous pattern formation are random and repetitive, whereas elaborate devices are the deterministic product of human design. Yet, biological organisms and collective insect constructions are exceptional examples of complex systems that are both architectured and self-organized. Can we understand their precise self-formation capabilities and integrate them with technological planning? Can physical systems be endowed with information, or informational systems be embedded in physics, to create autonomous morphologies and functions? This book is the first initiative of its kind toward establishing a new field of research, Morphogenetic Engineering, to explore the modeling and implementation of "self-architecturing" systems. Particular emphasis is set on the programmability and computational abilities of self-organization, properties that are often underappreciated in complex systems science-while, conversely, the benefits of selforganization are often underappreciated in engineering methodologies.

Epigenetic Operators and the Evolution of Physically Embodied Robots

“…For researchers interested in social and socially assistive robots (Tapus et al, 2007), for example, development focuses on learning and interactive changes in an agent's cognition (Asada et al, 2001). Others focus on life cycle changes in an agent's morphology (Jin and Meng, 2011;Doursat et al, 2012). For researchers interested in ER, changes in morphology during a digitally simulated embodied agent's lifespan dramatically alter the impact of selection on the evolution of behavior (Bongard, 2011).…”

“…Heeding the call for morphogenetic robotics (Jin and Meng, 2011) and morphogenetic engineering (Doursat et al, 2012), we note that what is missing from ER is not development per se but rather physically embodied development (PED). We take the first simple steps toward combining the two here by examining the interactions of EOs and GOs in the evolution of physically embodied and simulated robots.…”

From evolutionary computation to the evolution of things

“…Further to the traditionally simple genotypephenotype mappings, the use of indirect encodings is gaining traction. Such generative and developmental representations allow the reuse of code which helps scale up the complexity of artificially-evolved phenotypes, for instance, in evolutionary robotics, artificial life, and morphogenetic engineering 81,82,83,84,85 .…”

Artificial Immune System Driven Evolution in Swarm Chemistry

“…In [1], Doursat et al established a new field of research called morphogenetic engineering that aims to bridge the gap between emergent self-architectural structures that are typical of bio-inspired approaches and the programmability of more traditional systems engineering approaches. The process of filling this gap has evident ties with fostering the development of self-* properties in generic complex systems.…”

“…From another perspective, studying evolution in morphogenetic engineering provides a valuable instrument to better understand the emergent behaviours that characterize the self-organizing structures produced within this very new research field. In this paper we address a part of morphogenetic engineering known as coalescing, defined in [1] as "a great number of mobile agents flock and make together dense clusters, whose contours adopt certain shapes". Sayama [3] introduces the concept of swarm chemistry: a tuple of kinetic parameters is assigned to a swarm of particles that moves as described by the well known flocking algorithm as firstly introduced by Reynolds [4].…”