| Abstract |
Humanoids will soon co-exist with humans, helping us at home and at work,
assisting elder people, replacing us in dangerous environments and adding to
our personal communication devices the capability to actuate motion. In
order humanoids to be compatible with our everyday tools and our lifestyle
it is however mandatory to reproduce (at least partially) the body mind
nexus that makes humans so superior to machines. This requires a totally new
approach to humanoid technologies, combining new responsive and soft
materials, bioinspired sensors, high efficiency power sources and
cognition/intelligence of low computational cost. Such an unprecedented
merge of nanotechnology, cognition and mechatronics is inspired by
evolution, mimicking solutions and methods which have been successfully
optimized by mother nature to create all existing compliant, adaptive,
energy-efficient creatures: from bacteria to humans. Starting from a brief
analysis of living architectures, we will present the artificial
counterparts of several representative biological systems, such as
artificial antibodies, plantoids, animaloids and humanoids, pointing out
their applications to health, safety, assistance and describing the new
concepts and technologies enabling their intelligent operation.
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