MorphoSys Bridges Morphogenesis in Swarms of Cells and Robots

Abstract

Morphogenesis, a concept of developmental biology, means forming patterns of tissues and organs during embryo development. Its regulatory mechanisms provide an inspiring storehouse for swarm robotics. Though many swarm robot platforms and controlling methods have been developed, a reliable engineering methodology is still missing, which hinders the advances of swarm robotics. To address this problem, we present the MorphoSys, a platform integrating the research and development of morphogenesis in both swarms of cells and robots. MorphoSys includes three components: MorphoCell, MorphoSim, and MorphoBot. This MorphoSys enables us to quantitively investigate the governing principles of morphogenesis of cells and to translate these principles into controlling methods of robot swarms. Meanwhile, the robot swarms could serve as a physical model to study morphogenesis in cell swarms. Via enabling quantitative bio-mimicking, MorphoSys has the potential to develop a reliable engineering methodology for swarm robotics.