Collaborative Research: EMT/MISC: Behavior-Based Molecular Robotics

基于行为的机器人学是围绕这样一种想法建立的，即机器人可以通过连接基本的传感器和执行器模块来构建，而不需要形成它们运行所在世界的任何内部表示。如果设计得当，这样的机器人，无论是作为个人还是作为群体，都表现出复杂和表面上的智能？行为，实时解决具有挑战性的任务，同时只对当地环境做出反应，并遵守当地的规则。在一定程度上，这种机器人方法的灵感来自于考虑自然系统，例如群居昆虫在其群体中的自组织和适应性。一种类似的方法将在未来三年内启动基于行为的分子机器人领域的发展，导致在观察者看来显示各种面向任务的行为或某种形式的有目的和动态的自组织的分子群。基于个体行为的分子机器人是显示多个传感器-执行器的单分子。当暴露在人工景观中时，分子开始执行基本步骤，这些步骤是由不断变化的局部环境在随机意义上决定的。在一些被称为规定性的场景中，单个分子机器人和他们的集体将执行带有顺序控制机制的模拟上发条自动机的算法。相比之下，在非确定性的环境中，机器人及其集体将展示从单个传感器和执行器的内部组织以及分子与其环境之间的局部相互作用中产生的特性。重要的是，这些对分子行为的新解释将允许与所有以前的分子机器人方法完全不同的实验，同时保持实验设计的现实性，导致在物理世界中的体现。

Behavior-based robotics was established around the idea that robots could be constructed by connecting elementary sensor and actuator modules, without the need to form any internal representation of the world in which they operate. When designed appropriately, such robots, both as individuals and as groups, exhibit complex and seemingly ?intelligent? behaviors, solving challenging tasks in real time, while reacting only to their local environment and obeying sets of local rules. In part, this approach to robotics was inspired by considering natural systems, such as self-organization and adaptability of social insects in their colonies. An analogous approach to initiate the development of the field of behavior-based molecular robotics will be performed over the next three years, leading to groups of molecules that would appear to an observer to show a variety of task-oriented behaviors or some form of purposeful and dynamic self-organization. Individual behavior-based molecular robots are single molecules displaying multiple sensors-actuators. When exposed to artificial landscapes displaying substrates keyed to their sensors-actuators, the molecules start executing elementary steps, determined, in a stochastic sense, by their constantly changing local environments. On some landscapes, called prescriptive, individual molecular robots and their collectives will execute algorithms mimicking wound-up automata with sequence control mechanisms. In contrast, on non-deterministic landscapes, the robots and their collectives will demonstrate properties emerging from internal organization of individual sensors and actuators and through local interactions between molecules and their environments. Importantly, these new interpretations of molecular behaviors will allow radically different experiments from all previous approaches to molecular robotics, while keeping experimental designs realistic, leading to embodiment in the physical world.