Biological Robotics covers the interface between robotics and behavioural biology. The first international conference in this area took place in Paris in 1990. This meeting led to the development of what is now called the Society for Adaptive Behaviour (SAB), which holds an international meeting every two years.

Thie first biologically inspired robots, the famous electromechanical tortoises, were designed and built in 1949 by W. Grey Walter. This paper reviews their origins in Walter's theories of the brain and the nature of life, and uses contemporary unpublished notes and photographs to assess their significance then and now.

This paper demonstrates a new method in sampling environmental variables and underwater currents using special devices with a particular technique. The project involves developing a set of robots as the tools for data collection, and developing a system that can interpret the data collected. The ‘ocean' currents can be mapped using a flock of robots by dropping them into the ocean. As they descend, they record the desired sensory information such as salinity, temperature, pressure, the presence of specific chemicals, etc., along with other variables required for the system to function. Once at a predefined depth the robots start ascending and still continue collecting data until they reach the surface. Back on the surface, they communicate the collected data to a base computer in a ship or on land, through satellite or other means. The base computer collects the data from every recovered member of the flock and reconstructs the path they took underwater. Then using this path, it estimates the vectors of the oceanic currents. The environmental variables can be displayed in 3D for the sampled area.

In this paper we describe a prototype underwater robot capable of altering its density by heating oil. It is designed to gather information in the ocean, as a member of a flock of such robots. We also describe the forces acting on the robot, and suggest a preliminary control model.

Two key aspects of most living organisms is their ability to detect and exploit natural sources of energy within their environment. We are currently developing a robotic system that will attempt to sustain itself by hunting and catching slugs on agricultural land. A microbial fuel cell will be used to convert the slug bio-mass to electricity thus providing the robot's energy supply. This paper outlines the requirements for such a predator and describes the entire robot. Data is also presented from trials of the robot hunting and catching slugs in a situation similar to that found in agricultural fields.

The desert ant Cataglyphis is able to explore its desert habitat for hundreds of meters while foraging and return back to its nest precisely and in a straight line. With a body of less than 10 mm and a brain of less than one cubic millimeter they provide a challenge for hi-tech engineers. In this article, we give an overview of our attempts to model parts of its navigation behavior using robots and computer simulations. Inspired by the insect's navigation system we have developed mechanisms for path integration and visual piloting that were successfully employed on the mobile robot Sahabot 2.

This paper presents an investigation of odor localization by groups of autonomous mobile robots using principles of Swarm Intelligence. First, we describe a distributed algorithm by which groups of agents can solve the full odor localization task more efficiently than a single agent. Next, we demonstrate that a group of real robots under fully distributed control can successfully traverse a real odor plume, and that an embodied simulator can faithfully reproduce these real robots experiments. Finally, we use the embodied simulator combined with a reinforcement learning algorithm to optimize performance across group size, showing that it can be useful not only for improving real world odor localization, but also for quantitatively characterizing the influence of group size on task performance.

This paper discusses robots that are operational within a human-inhabited environment. Specifically, we identify different roles that such robots can adopt, reflecting different human-robot relationships. We discuss three different roles of robots in a project where we develop a robot as a therapeutic tool for children with autism: the robot as a therapeutic playmate, the robot as a social mediator, and the robot as a model social agent. Implications of these roles that go beyond this particular project are discussed.

This work introduces the concept of a brush-based tractor used for rescue in collapsed buildings or tunnels. The paper presents the bristle theory and traction experiments relating to a robot, which uses a sensor system for detecting the shapes of pipes or tunnel like voids within rubble. Traction experiments in the laboratory were used to investigate the characteristics of bristles and the performance of the brush units of different shapes. The experimental results are discussed in the paper and related to a single bristle theory with a view to giving guidance for the design of a future brush based rescue robot in debris.