Tony J. Prescott

An action-oriented perspective changes the role of an individual from a passive observer to an actively engaged agent interacting in a closed loop with the world as well as with others. Cognition exists to serve action within a landscape that contains both. This chapter surveys this landscape and addresses the status of the pragmatic turn. Its potential influence on science and the study of cognition are considered (including perception, social cognition, social interaction, sensorimotor entrainment, and language acquisition) and its impact on how neuroscience is studied is also investigated (with the notion that brains do not passively build models, but instead support the guidance of action). A review of its implications in robotics and engineering includes a discussion of the application of enactive control principles to couple action and perception in robotics as well as the conceptualization of system design in a more holistic, less modular manner. Practical applications that can impact the human condition are reviewed (e.g., educational applications, treatment possibilities for developmental and psychopathological disorders, the development of neural prostheses). All of this foreshadows the potential societal implications of the pragmatic turn. The chapter concludes that an action-oriented approach emphasizes a continuum of interaction between technical aspects of cognitive systems and robotics, biology, psychology, the social sciences, and the humanities, where the individual is part of a grounded cultural system.

Contemporary research in the field of robotics attempts to harness the versatility and sustainability of living organisms. By exploiting those natural principles, scientists hope to render a renewable, adaptable, and robust class of technology that can facilitate self-repairing, social, and moral--even conscious--machines. This is the realm of robotics that scientists call "the living machine." Living Machines can be divided into two entities-biomimetic systems, those that harness the principles discovered in nature and embody them in new artifacts, and biohybrid systems, which couple biological entities with synthetic ones. Living Machines: A handbook of research in biomimetic and biohybrid systems surveys this flourishing area of research. It captures the current state of play and points to the opportunities ahead, addressing such fields as self-organization and co-operativity, biologically-inspired active materials, self-assembly and self-repair, learning, memory, control architectures and self-regulation, locomotion in air, on land or in water, perception, cognition, control, and communication. In all of these areas, the potential of biomimetics is shown through the construction of a wide range of different biomimetic devices and animal-like robots. Biohybrid systems is a relatively new field, with exciting and largely unknown potential, but one that is likely to shape the future of humanity. Chapters outline current research in areas including brain-machine interfaces-where neurons are connected to microscopic sensors and actuators-and various forms of intelligent prostheses from sensory devices like artificial retinas, to life-like artificial limbs, brain implants, and virtual reality-based rehabilitation approaches. The handbook concludes by exploring the impact living machine technology will have on both society and the individual, by forcing human beings to question how we see and understand ourselves. With contributions from leading researchers drawing on ideas from science, engineering, and the humanities, this handbook will appeal to both undergraduate and postgraduate students of biomimetic and biohybrid technologies. Researchers in the areas of computational modeling and engineering, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, artificial life, biorobotics, neurorobotics, and human-machine interfaces, will find Living Machines an invaluable resource.