Last modifications on Sat, Dec 21, 1996.

Overview

Minimalist Robotics (otherwise known as MR)

• surveys the history of biologically-inspired robots and gives examples of many, discusses the theoretical foundations of MR,
• identifies the problems that electronic and mechanical biologically-inspired robots face,
• describes the design and implementation of several robots including built-and-tested insect-like Stiquito and bacteria-like BraitenGerm prototypes, and
• presents resources that you can use to build your own robots.

As a virtual book, MR was intended to be completely on-line and hypertext-linked. Unfortunately, this is not possible. Some of the material was published in the 1950's and 1960's, and until, if ever, the older material is put on-line, MR must remain incomplete. Some chapters will refer you to complete chapters or sections of books that are out of print, or to papers that are found in journals that are not on-line. I have presented only what I believe to be the most significant material. There is much I have not included that you might find helpful; the bibliography is an attempt to list what has been omitted from MR.

I have summarized the major results of the books and papers included in MR so that the book can be read without the off-line material.

As you will find, small robots are useful to study adaptation, dynamics, and emergent behavior in complex systems. But even a bacterium possesses a more complex intracellular structure than any robot we can build today. It is my belief that before nanorobotics is fully mature, small robots like those in MR, will become increasingly important as prototyping tools to understand the behavior of cellular robotic swarms.

I hope that you will enjoy reading about this research, building some of these robots, and joining us in research into new and even more exciting areas.