Josh Bongard
Robots. AI. Xenobots. meclab.org
- A Short History of AI. (Lecture 2 of Evolutionary Robotics course.) youtu.be/eUflmJDxlYA
- Reposted by Josh BongardNew preprint on unifying the zoo of multivariate higher-order information measures into a common form. May be of interest to anyone interested in higher-order interactions, complex systems, emergence, or complexity. 1/N arxiv.org/abs/2601.08030
- I'm teaching my evolutionary robotics course again, for those who want to follow along. Lecture 1: why make robots? youtu.be/FjNNFRDvQgs?...
- Reposted by Josh Bongard🚨New paper! 🚨 "The topology of synergy: Linking topological and information-theoretic approaches to higher-order interactions in complex systems" 1/N journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
- New paper dropped! Led by @thosvarley.bsky.social and Pai Vaibhav, we show that flows of information within a #xenobot resemble flows of information observed in adult human brains. Thomas provides caveats and context below. w/ @drmichaellevin.bsky.social, Caitlin Grasso, & Jeantine Lunshof.
- The caveats and context: bsky.app/profile/thos...
- New paper! This one is going to raise some eyebrows, so I want to explain the details before people get all worked-up about the title. 1/N www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
- For those interested in our growing body of work on "polycomputation", here's my attempt to summarize it in 40 minutes: youtu.be/XnObbF2FkE4?...
- Lab member Krishna Srinivasan delivers his very first academic presentation at the @alife2025.bsky.social conference. Go Krishna!
- My friend and colleague @drmichaellevin.bsky.social delivering his @alife2025.bsky.social keynote address... Remotely? In person? ...?
- Lab member Nate Gaylinn describing evolutionary ramps and ratchets @alife2025.bsky.social... (Paper coming soon...)
- Thanks for hosting us Foresight Institute! (w/ @tarinz.bsky.social and @drmichaellevin.bsky.social) www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCq2...
- #AIForGood attendees: thanks for the great questions about xenobots! Some of you asked about the demo. If you missed it, it's here: tinyurl.com/AI4Good25.
- Just arrived at the UN's #AIForGood Symposium in Geneva. Was in time to catch Daniela Rus' talk on AI Governance; I'll be speaking about #xenobots tomorrow. (Joint work w/ Doug Blackiston, @samkriegman.com & @drmichaellevin.bsky.social).
- Looking forward to speaking at the first Biohybrid Robotics Conference tomorrow! biohybrid-robotics.com
- Lab alumnus @samkriegman.com just won a very prestigious NSF CAREER Award. Congratulations Sam!! www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/...
- Reposted by Josh BongardReminder that my book "Evolution of Biological Information", which was pandemically overpriced by @princetonupress.bsky.social, is 50% off until May 31, with the checkout code "BLOOM50". That's a reasonable price. press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
- So proud of *Dr.* Caitlin Grasso (www.linkedin.com/in/caitlin-g...). She empowered herself by discovering how to empower machines (bit.ly/3Wwloi4). Congratulations again Caitlin.
- Reposted by Josh BongardCan AI drive a shift toward systems that mimic the brain? Can we develop intelligent matter that learns, adapts, and processes information? Check this @nature.com paper @drmichaellevin.bsky.social @doctorjosh.bsky.social ris.utwente.nl/ws/portalfil...
- Reposted by Josh BongardFun time to be in the US academia www.nature.com/articles/d41...
- The final #robotics lecture: xenobots. youtu.be/wAEdX1l259k?...
- Today's lecture: soft robots and differentiable robots. www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHa_...
- Today's robotics lecture: evolving bodies and brains. youtu.be/xYL1Dfu0Odo
- Snowflake robotics. Presented at the 2025 Embodied Intelligence Conference. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbAq...
- Today's #robotics lecture: the evolution of communication. [Fun stuff starts at 27m] youtu.be/JxQTaXSTiqI
- Today's lecture: swarm robotics. Again: what could possibly go wrong? youtu.be/R3_QcxO1LO4
- We published a new xenobot-related paper today: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol... In a nutshell: building xenobots from frog "explants" is good because explants, apparently, come with adaptive potential "built in". This paper took 6 years and 10 co-authors (see post #2) to reach the light.
- 10 co-authors: Doug Blackiston, Hannah Dromiack, Caitlin Grasso, @thosvarley.bsky.social, Doug Moore, Krishna Srinivasan, Olaf Sporns, me, @drmichaellevin.bsky.social, @saraimari.bsky.social. Special thanks to Sara Imari Walker for keeping all of us focused, for so long. Great work team!
- Today's lecture: self-replicating #robots. What could go possibly go wrong? youtu.be/IAlGZW4EOnc?...
- Reposted by Josh BongardNew pre-print just dropped, with @doctorjosh.bsky.social, @alicepatania.bsky.social, and Pedro Mediano. In it we ask: when an algebraic topologist and an information theorist talk about "higher-order" structure, are they talking about the same thing? A 🧵1/n arxiv.org/abs/2504.10140
- Yesterday's #robotics lecture: the Transferability project. youtu.be/aKDmbBzPp7w
- Reposted by Josh BongardNam Le presents swarm models that show emergence of higher-order evolutionary entities #NERCCS2025
- Today's robotics lecture: the Resilient Machines project. youtu.be/miQHlx6-iYc
- Reposted by Josh BongardThis was a brilliant conference. Soft robotics, swarms, human and animal behaviour and biology, dinosaurs, you name it. So much to see, videos are online. I'll post a few personal highlights below. Is there a nascent #EmbodiedIntelligence community on Bluesky?
- The Embodied Intelligence conference embodied-intelligence.org starts tomorrow. Looking forward to re/connecting with old/new friends and colleagues.
- Today's robotics lecture: the GOLEM project. Robots, evolution, 3D printers, Jewish folklore... what's not to love? youtu.be/EOBNAwcdXXo?...
- Yesterday's #robotics lecture: mind the (reality) gap! youtu.be/yK36d3WlDQ4
- Great example of embodied cognition demonstrated by Thrishantha Nanayakkara just now at the embodied-intelligence.org conference: youtu.be/oZbZZlDDEnc
- The Embodied Intelligence conference embodied-intelligence.org starts tomorrow. Looking forward to re/connecting with old/new friends and colleagues.
- Today's #robotics lecture: the NEAT algorithm, contd. Fun stuff starts at 37m54s: youtu.be/wWSD_Cw1gk4?...
- Reposted by Josh BongardCausal understanding is not a point of view, it’s a point of do – aeon.co/essays/causa... via @aeonmag
- Today's lecture: passive dynamic locomotion. youtu.be/5cTg0ruy2Og?...
- Reposted by Josh Bongardwww.youtube.com/watch?v=jnoa... Bio-Inspired Plastic Neural Nets that continually adapt their own synaptic strengths can make for extremely robust locomotion policies! Trained exclusively in simulation, the plastic networks transfer easily to the real world, even under various extra OOD situations.
- Today's evolutionary #robotics lecture: bipedal locomotion. In which John Cleese and yours truly demonstrate several silly walks. youtu.be/4o9CZK8Azcw
- Reposted by Josh BongardNow #IEEEALIFECIS2025 officially kicks off! Stefano Nichele introduces IEEE ALIFE-CIS keynote Luca Manzoni, who discusses the true origin of ALIFE, the work by Nils Barricelli
- Reposted by Josh Bongard#IEEESSCI2025 first keynote Metin Sitti discusses the importance of physical body in intelligence
- Reposted by Josh BongardStand Up for Science Burlington, Vermont
- Why don't plants have brains? Answers in today's evolutionary #robotics lecture. youtu.be/u2xL0tBTG3U
- Reposted by Josh Bongard1/46 Hey folks, we have a new paper out on the MuLTEE. Strap in and I’ll tell you the story of how this “little paper on polyploidy” turned into the most data rich paper our lab has produced, largely thanks to the leadership and work ethic of @kaitong25.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- @drmichaellevin.bsky.social presents to the United Nations on how xenobots (Doug Blackiston & @samkriegman.com), anthrobots (Gizem Gumuskaya), and other discoveries from his lab can serve as "agential materials" that AI can employ to interface with the body. www.youtube.com/live/T40utCZ...
- Today's #robotics lecture: selective attention. Now that I've posted this, I should get back to what I was working on before... ...if only I could remember what that was. youtu.be/BKzOfR9zWCc
- Reposted by Josh BongardEvery single philanthropic institution needs to do this rather than retracting right now. abcnews-go-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/abcnews....
- Today's evolutionary #robotics lecture: Minimal cognition. Continued. youtu.be/uWh07Cp5Ynk?...
- Reposted by Josh BongardWhat would you love to know about evolving #robot brains and bodies ? 🤖 Later this season, I'll be chatting to Prof. Emma Hart from Edinburgh Napier University about algorithms that 'evolve' better robot designs and control systems. Send me your questions for Emma in the comments. #Robotics
- Today's evolutionary #robotics lecture: minimal cognition. youtu.be/B_rKZZe3KOI?...
- Reposted by Josh BongardMuhan Li will present his freeform endoskeletal robots at ICLR in April: endoskeletal.github.io Evolve yours at home today!
- Reposted by Josh BongardNew paper w/ Luke Strgar sites.google.com/view/co-desi... ...in a nutshell: ⛰️ differentiable physics 🏋️ morphological pretraining 🧠 a universal controller 🧬 zero shot evolution 💡 adaptive phototaxis ☠️ diversity collapse 🔧 generational finetuning 🦘 few shot evolution
- Today's lecture: Continuous Time Recurrent Neural Networks (CTRNNs). (And a bit of differentiable robot design.) youtu.be/EBxCpm9DnXM
- Empowerment dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1... in neurons.
- Super interesting idea that each neuron is trying to control its inputs open.spotify.com/episode/1ZoX...
- Reposted by Josh BongardResearchers at Tufts University have developed tiny, 3D printed robots with soft joints, which could be mass produced cheaply for applications like disaster response or search and rescue. 🤖 interestingengineering.com/innovation/r... #Robots #Robotics
- Reposted by Josh Bongard‼️FYI. The deadline for paper contributions is May 4th 2025*. Our submission platform will open shortly. Note: This year looks a bit different to previous years. We'll be inviting 3 types of contributions: Full papers (3-8 pages) Summaries (2 pages) ✨️new!✨️ Late Breaking Abstracts (2 pages)* 👇
- Today's lecture. The Sussex gantry #robot. youtu.be/LsyXCowjEc0
- Today's evolutionary #robotics lecture: the very first experiments. www.youtube.com/watch?v=g60-...
- Reposted by Josh BongardJust found out I had a couple of papers accepted to the IEEE #ALife conference, which means it's time for my first Bluetorial 🧪! The first paper is about evolutionary algorithms for swarm robotics and was led by my PhD student, Max Foreback, in collaboration with @cliffbohm.bsky.social 1/n
- Reposted by Josh BongardLink to the #ALife feed: bsky.app/profile/did:... Use #ALife (case sensitive), #alife⚙️🧫 or just ⚙️🧫 to be published here.
- Reposted by Josh BongardGot questions about robot evolution 🤖 ? Later this season, I'll be chatting to Dr. Tanja Katharina Kaiser from the University of Technology Nuremberg about how evolutionary principles can help robot teams make better decisions. Send me your questions for Tanja: robottalk.org/ask-a-question/
- Reposted by Josh BongardPls join the #AAAS2025 #StandUpForScience protest in Boston next week ❤️✊🏽
- Reposted by Josh BongardOh gosh. Found on the web. Anthropic (producer of Claude LLMs) asking job applicants to not use AI systems when filling in their application. simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/2/a...
- Reposted by Josh BongardNew preprint with bhartl.bsky.social, Yanbo Zhang, @drhazan.bsky.social: Heuristically Adaptive Diffusion-Model Evolutionary Strategy arxiv.org/abs/2411.13420
- Today's evolutionary #robotics lecture: physics engines. youtu.be/Tdv098MQMmc
- Awesome survey from Bertoldi lab. Fun fact: you can get metamaterials to compute as well, thus conflating "thought" and "action". Take that Descartes! dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
- Nice review of shape-morphing metamaterials. The images alone tell much of the story about the rather wonderful materials we can now make. www.arxiv.org/abs/2501.14804
