Conference/Collaborative Research: Interdisciplinary Workshop on Mechanical Intelligence; Alexandria, Virginia; late 2023/early 2024

This award supports an Interdisciplinary Workshop on Mechanical Intelligence. Mechanical intelligence is an umbrella term that is used to refer to all forms of physical intelligence and morphological computations in biological and engineered systems. The workshop will bring together 40 participants, covering expertise in robotics, biomechanics, neuroscience, applied math, physics, machine learning, mechanics, and materials. The presentations and discussions will address a path for finding a common language, formulating theory, and developing quantifiable metrics for mechanically intelligent systems that translate across disciplines, with an additional underlying goal of facilitating an interdisciplinary approach to mechanical intelligence. After the workshop, a report will be generated to summarize the findings, which will be shared with the general research community. Despite ample evidence of the application of mechanical intelligence in biological and robotic systems, this topic has received less attention in the current era of cognitive and electronic intelligence. The activities of the workshop are designed to bring together researchers with expertise in mathematics, physics, computational science, materials science, robotics and biology to discuss plans to develop (1) a shared vocabulary that facilitates fruitful interaction and exchange of perspectives and ideas on mechanical intelligence across disciplines, and (2) theory, methods, and quantifiable metrics of mechanical intelligence to enable comparison across diverse instantiations of mechanical intelligence. Addressing both of these gaps is expected to catalyze advancement in the field of mechanical intelligence and moving it forward. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.