Self-Reconfigurable and Learning Robots Funded by Air Force Office of Scientific Research Published April 24, 2008 By By Maria Callier (Anadarko/CIBER Team) Air Force Office of Scientific Research Public Affairs ARLINGTON, Va. -- An AFOSR-funded research team from the University of Southern California (USC) is creating superbots, self-reconfigurable robots that can change their logical or physical configurations and alter their locomotion and manipulation. Dr. Wei-Men Shen, director of Polymorphic Robotics Laboratory, the associate director of the Centre for Robotics and Embedded Systems, and a research associate professor in computer science at USC is leading the team in SuperBot research. Already, they have found the robots to be versatile, self-healing, metamorphic machines that cost minimally to duplicate. The researchers plan to learn from nature and use biologically-inspired approaches to solve problems related to self-reconfiguration, self-learning and self-healing. "We use a distributed framework inspired by the biological concept of hormones," said Dr. Shen. "In this digital hormone framework, modules are viewed as autonomous agents or cells that are nameless, but communicate and reconfigure with hormone-like messages to perform locomotion, manipulation, self-reconfiguration and self-healing." Program Manager, Dr. David Luginbuhl is overseeing Dr. Shen's research into improving SuperBot's prediction capabilities and creating algorithms to detect surprise in "Surprise-Based Learning." The goal of making robots learn from the environment seems intuitively simple, but in fact it requires rigid investigation and mathematical calculations. "This research directly supports the Air Force vision of information dominance, and the development of 'anywhere, anytime' operational readiness by enhancing the warfighter's ability to assimilate new information readily in a distributed fashion," said Shen. Dr. Shen noted, "Future robots will be able to change their configurations and adapt to new and unexpected situations: after disasters, when exploring space, the ocean and in operations in hazardous environments. They will be resilient to damage they suffer because of their self-healing properties." According to AFOSR program manager, Dr. Bob Herklotz even NASA has interest in SuperBots. The results of the AFOSR program are incorporated into a larger scale SuperBot project that NASA is funding. By funding programs like this one for basic research in controlling self-reconfigurable SuperBots, (http://www.isi.edu/robots ) and Surprise-Based Learning, AFOSR continues to expand the horizon of scientific knowledge through its leadership and management of the Air Force's basic research program.