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BEAM Robotics

Some years back in 1998 I was heavily involved in BEAM robotics and authored the popular site on BEAM technology (called BEAM Tek) and built many robots. The availability of free time dried up and documents I once kept up-to-date, quickly became stale. Herein lies some of that information; for more information on BEAM robotics, see Solarbotics.

What is BEAM robotics?

BEAM is a acronym standing for: Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics and Mechanics

The basic principles of BEAM rest on the fact to build smart machines one must first build a smart body. Forget the brain, let us just focus on a simple stimulus-response based ability within a machine. In it's shortest form is:

• Use minimalist electronics (keep it simple, reduced parts count)
• Recycle & Reuse components out of technoscrap
• Use solar power, if possible

Tilden stated..."The science behind the idea stems from current concepts in artificial intelligence (AI), artificial life (ALife), evolutionary biology, and genetic algorithms. It seems that building large complex robots hasn't worked well, so why not try to evolve them from a lesser to a greater ability as mother nature has done with biologics? The problem is that such a concept requires self-reproducing robots which won't be possible to build (if at all) for years to come. A solution, however, is to view a human being as a robot's way of making another robot, to have an annual venue where experimenters can let their creations interact in real situations, and then watch as machine evolution occurs. In other words, robogenetics through robobiologics."