The human body is one of the most complex systems on earth. Its complexity is so mind buggling, and that parameters of the body are interrelated with a huge number of bodily functions. Therefore by tweaking one parameter of the system and claiming that it would enhance one feature of the body without having any effects on the rest of the system is rather naive. Such a tweak is most likely to have disastrous effects on othe body functions. If such a tweak was possible, evolution had long discovered it. The fact that such a tweak [which probably occurred during evolution] did not survive should make us think twice. Don't underestimate the "wisdom/intelligence" of evolution.
"Pheromone Robotics" is not pheromone robotics
on
Pheromone Robotics
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· Score: 2, Informative
I am aware of this project quite a long time, since I'm working on a similar project called "Swarm-Bots" [web site www.swarm-bots.org]. According to me their use of the term "pheromone" is not more than a catchy adjective to label their work. The research, as displayed on their web site, does not take many ideas from the ethological studies of ant colonies. For instance the robots communicate directly with each other, NOT through the environment, which is what ants use pheromone for. To me, it is merely an integration of the dynamic programming technique with mobile robots coupled with VR display interface. For those new to the subject, there is a new approach, called "swarm intelligence" that aims to create intelligent systems from a group of distributed simple agents. An excellent description of this approach is available in the
"Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial Systems By Eric Bonabeau, Marco Dorigo, and Guy Theraulaz"
.
In this approach, the agents communicate through the environment, called stigmergy, to achieve
group level tasks. There is no centralized control, yet the whole system is very scalable and robust. I hope to report some news on the
progress of the Swarm-Bots soon.
Slashdot Mirror
The human body is one of the most complex systems on earth. Its complexity is so mind buggling, and that parameters of the body are interrelated with a huge number of bodily functions. Therefore by tweaking one parameter of the system and claiming that it would enhance one feature of the body without having any effects on the rest of the system is rather naive. Such a tweak is most likely to have disastrous effects on othe body functions. If such a tweak was possible, evolution had long discovered it. The fact that such a tweak [which probably occurred during evolution] did not survive should make us think twice. Don't underestimate the "wisdom/intelligence" of evolution.
I am aware of this project quite a long time, since I'm working on a similar project called "Swarm-Bots" [web site www.swarm-bots.org]. According to me their use of the term "pheromone" is not more than a catchy adjective to label their work. The research, as displayed on their web site, does not take many ideas from the ethological studies of ant colonies. For instance the robots communicate directly with each other, NOT through the environment, which is what ants use pheromone for. To me, it is merely an integration of the dynamic programming technique with mobile robots coupled with VR display interface. For those new to the subject, there is a new approach, called "swarm intelligence" that aims to create intelligent systems from a group of distributed simple agents. An excellent description of this approach is available in the "Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial Systems By Eric Bonabeau, Marco Dorigo, and Guy Theraulaz" . In this approach, the agents communicate through the environment, called stigmergy, to achieve group level tasks. There is no centralized control, yet the whole system is very scalable and robust. I hope to report some news on the progress of the Swarm-Bots soon.