ICCS06/Ali Minai
From NECSIWiki
[edit] Ali Minai
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science
836 Engineering Research Center
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH 45221-0030
The term "biomorphic systems" is often applied narrowly to systems with an explicitly "biological" form (e.g., hexapedal robots), but it can also refer more broadly to all biologically-inspired artificial systems. Such systems have become an increasingly significant part of the engineering enterprise in recent years, and are being used in many domains such as sensor networks, adaptive control, robotics, MEMS, etc. There is an expectation that this approach will produce solutions to many difficult problems such as truly autonomous intelligence and self-configuring machines. However, a general vision encompassing all biologically-inspiredsystems is only just beginning to develop.
In addition to giving a brief overview of the field, this talk will focus on two issues:
1. An instrumentalist versus essentialist view of biomorphic systems.
2. The characteristics that distinguish biomorphic systems from traditional engineered systems and from non-biological complex systems.
The goal is to identify a (necessarily incomplete and somewhat speculative) set of basic principles that make a system "essentially biomorphic", and to clarify the advantages and drawbacks of this approach for engineered systems.
