Article ID: CBB283870317

The elephant in the room: The biomimetic principle in bio-robotics and embodied AI (2023)

unapi

In recent years, bio-inspired robots have shaped numerous domains of technical and scientific production. Bio-inspired robots can now be found in all areas of industry, medicine, architecture, and even culture. Despite the wealth of historiographic and philosophical studies published on this topic, a philosophical investigation of the mimetic principle used in bio-robotics is still missing. In this paper, I will ask a simple question: what is the role of biomimetic and bio-inspired processes in the different practices of bio-robotics? In the following pages, I will first make some conceptual order. I discuss the differences between several bio-inspired disciplines to clearly identify the biomimetic principle. Second, I introduce the discussion on the necessity of imitating nature in early twentieth-century bio-robotics. Third, I state the broader philosophical issue at stake in the debate on the biomimetic principle: the model-world relation, as discussed in the philosophical literature on models and idealization. In section 4, I address several emblematic case studies in which the imitation of nature, variously declined, is fundamental for producing knowledge, thus providing cursory taxonomy of the biomimetic principle. In the conclusion, I will come back to the elephant in the room and suggest how to tackle it further in a fruitful manner. As a broader result, my proposed taxonomy might be used by historians of science and technology as a starting point for historicizing the different practices of current bio-robotics as well as by philosophers to further problematize the various philosophical frameworks that have been accepted and developed in bio-robotics.

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Authors & Contributors
Aytes, Ayhan
Boden, Margaret A.
Castañeda, Claudia
Chrisley, Ronald
Clark, Andy
Geraci, Robert M.
Journals
Technikgeschichte: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Technik und Industrie
Bulletin for the History of Chemistry
Circumscribere: International Journal for the History of Science
History and Technology
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Physis: Rivista Internazionale di Storia della Scienza
Publishers
Duke University Press
Kluwer Academic
Oxford University Press
Pickering & Chatto
Routledge
Springer
Concepts
Artificial intelligence
Automata; robotics; cyborgs
Philosophy of science
Cognitive science
Epistemology
Human-machine interaction
People
Kempelen, Wolfgang von
Craik, Kenneth James William
Haraway, Donna Jeanne
Walter, William Grey
Mori, Masahiro
Nishimura, Makoto
Time Periods
21st century
20th century
20th century, late
18th century
19th century
Enlightenment
Places
Europe
Japan
London (England)
Hamburg (Germany)
Institutions
University of Oxford (UK)
Museum der Arbeit (Hamburg)
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