The elephant in the room: The biomimetic principle in bio-robotics and embodied AI

In recent years, bio-inspired robots have shaped numerous domains of technical and scientific production. Bio-inspired robots can now be found in all areas of industry, medicine, architecture, and even culture. Despite the wealth of historiographic and philosophical studies published on this topic, a philosophical investigation of the mimetic principle used in bio-robotics is still missing. In this paper, I will ask a simple question: what is the role of biomimetic and bio-inspired processes in the different practices of bio-robotics? In the following pages, I will first make some conceptual order. I discuss the differences between several bio-inspired disciplines to clearly identify the biomimetic principle. Second, I introduce the discussion on the necessity of imitating nature in early twentieth-century bio-robotics. Third, I state the broader philosophical issue at stake in the debate on the biomimetic principle: the model-world relation, as discussed in the philosophical literature on models and idealization. In section 4, I address several emblematic case studies in which the imitation of nature, variously declined, is fundamental for producing knowledge, thus providing cursory taxonomy of the biomimetic principle. In the conclusion, I will come back to the elephant in the room and suggest how to tackle it further in a fruitful manner. As a broader result, my proposed taxonomy might be used by historians of science and technology as a starting point for historicizing the different practices of current bio-robotics as well as by philosophers to further problematize the various philosophical frameworks that have been accepted and developed in bio-robotics.