Editorial: Recent Trends in Morphological Computation Ghazi-Zahedi et al. Editorial: Recent Trends in Morphological Computation

Abstract

Editorial on the Research Topic [Recent Trends in Morphological Computation]() Morphological Computation is a concept that suggests that morphological properties, such as the shape and form of a body, as well as dynamical properties like compliance, resonance, and friction, play a crucial role in the emergence of intelligent behavior in nature. Many biological systems appear to have found clever ways to exploit morphological features of their bodies to improve interaction with their environment. As a result, important functions like sensing, control or even computation are partly outsourced to the body’s morphology. This, in turn, enables biological systems to be extremely robust, energy efficient, and highly adaptive. Clearly, these are all properties that are very desirable for robotics systems as well, especially, if they should operate in complex and noisy environments. While the role of morphological features in biological systems is well accepted, so far, the translation and application of this concept to robotics remains underexplored. One of the main reasons is that the emphasis on the body as a resource for functionality is in stark contrast to the currently dominating design and control paradigms in robotics, where the body is seen as something that needs to be dominated. The robot’s morphology is seen as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Current robotic systems use rigid body parts and high torque servo motors to suppress any undesirable morphological behaviors like nonlinearity, underactuation or noise ([5]). The motivation is that rigid bodies can be captured by very simple models and, therefore, can be easily controlled. However, at the same time this method of robot design might overlook the potential for embedding beneficial functionalities within the body and it overrides any natural movements by using a large amount of energy. Remarkably, these same complex morphological properties that are avoided in conventional robotic designs often play a key role in the behavior of natural systems, many of which outperform state-of-the-art robots in many real-world tasks.