RI: Small: BCSP: Robustness and Adaptation in Morphogenetic Collective Systems

本项目的目的是了解一般形态发生原理的作用，如成分的异质性，成分的分化/再分化，以及生物群体自组织中成分之间的局部信息交换，并利用它们来提高集体人工系统的性能。本研究分以下四个步骤进行：（1）利用数学/计算模型研究形态发生原理对异质群体自组织模式的影响。(2)应用理论研究的结果来构建在现实世界的异质生物群体中发现的实际自组织模式的模型。(3)将形态发生学原理引入现有的集体人工系统，并开发用于编程其结构和行为的机制。(4)在分散的优化和探索任务中，测量所提出的形态发生集体系统的整体性能。这项研究有助于生物学和生态学提供了新的理论见解如何异构集体可能自组织没有集中控制，也计算科学和工程带来了一个未探索的组合形态发生的原则到生物启发的计算系统。它预计将产生社会影响，提供了一个新的框架，设计的增长，自组织，自修复和不断发展的文物。本计画包括下列教育活动：（1）复杂系统科学跨学科研究生证书课程。(2)生命起源与进化的计算方法新课程。(3)地区高中研究项目。(4)在纽约科学馆的形态发生集体系统的公开展览。将努力吸引目前在STEM中代表性不足的女性和少数民族学生。

The objective of this project is to understand the roles of general morphogenetic principles such as heterogeneity of components, differentiation/re-differentiation of components, and local information exchange among components in the self-organization of biological collectives, and to utilize them to improve the performance of collective artificial systems. The research is conducted in the following four steps: (1) Study the effects of morphogenetic principles on self-organizing patterns of heterogeneous collectives using mathematical/computational models. (2) Apply the results of theoretical investigation to construct models of actual self-organizing patterns found in real-world heterogeneous biological collectives. (3) Introduce the morphogenetic principles to existing collective artificial systems and develop mechanisms for programming their structures and behaviors. (4) Measure the overall performance of the proposed morphogenetic collective systems in decentralized optimization and exploration tasks. This research contributes to biology and ecology by providing new theoretical insight into how heterogeneous collectives may self-organize without centralized control, and also to computational science and engineering by bringing an unexplored combination of morphogenetic principles into bio-inspired computational systems. It is expected to produce societal impacts by providing a novel framework for the design of growing, self-organizing, self-repairing, and evolving artifacts. This project involves the following educational activities: (1) Interdisciplinary graduate certificate program in complex systems science. (2) New course on computational approaches to the origin and evolution of life. (3) Regional high school research program. (4) Public exhibition of morphogenetic collective systems at New York Hall of Science. Efforts will be made to attract female and ethnic minority students who are currently underrepresented in STEM.