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Introduction to Biomimetics 33

capability to steer itself to land at selected sites. Some of the issues being studied include the
appropriate vehicle size, acceptable descent speed in the Martian atmosphere, mass distribution
and platform shape to assure stable autorotation and scalability from operation on Earth to
performance on Mars.

1.8.3 Social and Other Biological Behaviors

One of the many characteristics of humans and animals is their sociability, i.e., having the ability to
express feelings, respond to stimulation, and make independent decisions, actions, and reactions.
Efforts are increasingly being made to imitate such characteristics with robots. These robots are
being equipped with autonomous operation, the ability to communicate feelings in the form of
facial expressions and voices, to react to feelings expressed by humans, to have defense and attack
capabilities, as well as many other characteristics that are considered biological (Bar-Cohen and
Breazeal, 2003).
Generally, many of our behavioral characteristics are learned throughout our life, with some
abilities that are genetically coded and improved through our life experience. Some animals have
some abilities that are far superior to those of humans, and these are coded into their genetics. For
example, babies of migratory animals begin walking without assistance or guidance minutes after
birth. While the baby depends on its mother for milk for survival, it is ‘‘equipped’’ with extensive
other abilities that are critical to its survival including seeing, hearing, running, recognizing danger,
and even the capability of passive self-defense. Inspired by these characteristics, robots are
increasingly being developed with autonomous operations and programmed with social abilities
to interact with humans (Breazeal, 2004). Learning to make realistic robots with social skills can
have many important benefits including understanding behavior in humans and providing a cure to
certain phobias. Recent advances in virtual reality and AI allow studying and treating patients with
phobias such as the fear of heights, or closed areas.
Social creatures, including insects and birds, have various approaches for solving difficult
computational problems such as discrete optimization. Examples of modeling for optimization
include activities in ant colony and the seed-picking process of pigeons. The latter, which is also
known as the Particle Swarm optimization algorithm, is an analytical tool that is based on the
statistical process of seeds picking. This algorithm is considered very effective in evolving
hardware and particularly in designing combinational electric circuits (Amaral et al., 2004).
These biologically inspired optimization algorithms are used to solve problems such as vehicle
routing and routing in telecommunication networks.
Operating in a group generally gives social creatures advantages in defense that are unavailable
to animals that operate individually. Migrant animals move as a herd, warn each other, and even
jointly defend themselves. Birds fly in formation to help with long distance travel by taking
advantage of vortices that are formed by flapping their wings. Lionesses gather in packs to protect
their cubs not only from potential enemies but also from other male lions, as lions will kill cubs that
are not their own to have their own genes entered into the species gene pool. Ants and bees live in a
social structure and are able to accomplish extensive tasks because of this behavior. Wolves
traveling in packs to hunt have the head of the pack ‘‘instruct’’ the other wolfs who obey the
head’s orders while chasing herds or other prey (Towery, 1996). In some ways, military operations
are similar, as the commander in a military operation directs the soldiers, and they also ‘‘obey the
orders’’ while executing the war strategy that is dictated by the commander. Generally, wolfs have
a highly complex social order where every pack has a male leader, and all wolves in the pack are
aware of their positions through communication with various body postures.
Roboticists are now considering the use of multiple small robots that can operate in colonies like
the ants. Such robots are made capable to operate both as individuals in cooperative systems, and as
inter-connectable parts of a large system. Their capabilities would be far greater than those that can
be obtained with an individual robot.