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6

Robotic Biomimesis of Intelligent Mobility,
Manipulation, and Expression

David Hanson

CONTENTS
6.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 177
6.2 Mobility and Motility: Flying, Walking, Crawling, Manipulation ..................................................... 180
6.2.1 Locomotion Principles............................................................................................................ 181
6.2.2 Flexibility, Hybrids, and Reconfiguration .............................................................................. 183
6.2.3 Walking and Running............................................................................................................. 184
6.2.4 Flying, etc. .............................................................................................................................. 186
6.2.5 Grasping and Manipulation .................................................................................................... 187
6.2.6 Motion Conclusion Summary................................................................................................. 188
6.3 Behavior, Expressivity ......................................................................................................................... 188
6.3.1 Intelligence and Perception..................................................................................................... 188
6.3.1.1 Language, Ontologies, Top-Down......................................................................... 188
6.3.1.2 Vision, Other Sensing, Sensor Fusion.................................................................... 189
6.3.2 Social Intelligence, Social Robots, and Robot Visual Identity.............................................. 189
6.4 Robotic Materials, Structures, and Manufacturability......................................................................... 195
6.5 Conclusory Remarks ............................................................................................................................ 197
Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................................... 198
References....................................................................................................................................................... 198

6.1 INTRODUCTION

A revolution is quietly brewing. The numerous systems and subsystems of intelligent, agile
synthetic organisms are rapidly improving in efficacy. And yet, the tremendous scope of this action
may be less than obvious to the casual observer, because the various points of evidence are rarely
examined in tandem. This chapter seeks to highlight trends that indicate that biorobotics stands
poised to strongly affect our new century.
Our biology and our technology are converging on numerous fronts: genetic engineering,
augmented cognition, artificial life, and bio-inspired robotics are some examples. While this
chapter focuses on robotics, the boundaries between disciplines grow increasingly porous. This
chapter does not try to limit its purview to technologies that are relevant to robotics exclusively;
much of biomimetic robotics overlaps with other disciplines. Yet this chapter does consider robots

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