Subject:
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Re: Science Magazine
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Fri, 19 Jul 2002 12:38:54 GMT
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Viewed:
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582 times
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As a service to Lugmanity, here are extracts from "Reverse Engineering of
Biological Complexity" ME Csete & JC Doyle, Science 1st March 2002 vol 295 p1666
"Consider the ubiquitous Lego toy system (33,34). The signature feature of
lego is the patented snap connection for easy but stable assembly of
components. The snap is the basic Lego protocol, and Lego bricks are its
basic modules.
...
Lego exhibits multilayer robustness, from components and toys to the product
line. Lego bricks and toys are resuable and robust to trauma, and the snap
is versatile, permitting endless varieties of toys from an array of
components. This makes both a given Lego collection and the entire toy
system evolvable to changes in what one chooses to build, to the addition of
new Lego-compatible parts, and to novel toy designs. Evolution here is
simply robustness to (possibly large) changes on long time scales. The low
cost of modules and the popularity of the system confer other forms of
robustness and evolvability; lost parts are easily replaced, and enthusiasts
constantly design new modules and toys. The Lego protocol also creates
fragilities at every level. Superficially miniscule damage to the snap at a
key interface may cause an entire toy to fail, yet noninterfacing parts of
bricks may be heavily damaged with minimal impact. The success of Lego means
that any new snap, even a superior one, would not be easily adopted.
Selection pressures thus preserve a protocol in two ways: protocols
facilitate evolution and are difficult to change."
[After this segment is a discussion of comparison with other protocols, such
as smooth glue and mold, followed by discussion of the protocols for motors
etc, which add complexity to the basic protocol.]
...
Lego has a perfectly complete "legome" of all parts, including full
structure and function. A similar compendium is far from available for even
simple organisms. Yet understanding a collision-avoiding,
software-intensive, feedback-regulated Lego robot would require extensive
reverse engineering of additional layers of protocols and modules beyond the
legome. That the legome would not be sufficient is no surprise, but for
reverse engineering such details may not be entirely necessary (see below).
Imagine that such a Lego robot was a prototype for a single toy that
dispenced entirely with the Lego modules in favour of custom
implementations. Similar to 'Mold', this toy could easily have much more
robustness to trauma, be faster, and navigate more complex obstacles, but at
the expense of limited part reuse. The modules and lower level protocols --
most of the legome -- would be completely different, yet we might claim that
the essence of the toy, and what the prototype aimed to capture, remained.
That essence involves the protocols that organized the sensors, actuators,
and feedback control system that enables the obstacle avoidance and
contributes almost the entire cost and complexity. These too are goverened
by protocols, but also by entirely new laws.
...
[the we get into the Maths!]
"
Why am I quoting this? Well, it is the essence of the Lego contribution, but
also of academic interest to me, as I am currently being funded to look into
the modularity of lego Mindstorms with other educational robot products in
the UK. So thanks for the reference. People not interested in Systems
Biology need not read the rest...
Mike Reddy, School of Computing, University of Glamorgan
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Science Magazine
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| (URL) TRYING TO GO THORUGH THTE PROGRAM BUT THIS SITE DOES not contain anything. Any Ideas. Also I am a beginner on Mindstorms and wish to download a small program (C++) onto the brick but don;t know how to go about it. Any help? Regards Am ----- (...) (22 years ago, 19-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Fw: Science Magazine
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| -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 From: "Jeff Lalo" To: <> Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2002 3:05 PM Subject: Science Magazine (...) Actually, 2002 (URL) I don't want to pay $5.00US to read it. I'll take a look next time I'm in the library. (...) (22 years ago, 19-Jul-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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