Luisa Damiano

Towards Human–Robot Affective Co-evolution Overcoming Oppositions in Constructing Emotions and Empathy

This article deals with contemporary research aimed at building emotional and empathic robots, and gives an overview of the field focusing on its main characteristics and ongoing transformations. It interprets the latter as precursors to a paradigmatic transition that could significantly change our social ecologies. This shift consists in abandoning the classical view of emotions as essentially individual states, and developing a relational view of emotions, which, as we argue, can create genuinely new emotional and empathic processes—dynamics of “human–robot” affective coordination supporting the development of mixed (human–robot) ecologies.

A synthetic biology approach to bio-chem-ICT: first moves towards chemical communication between synthetic and natural cells

In this article we present novel aspects of the impact that synthetic biology (SB) can express in a field traditionally based on computer science: information and communication technologies (ICTs), an area that we will consider taking into account also possible implications for artificial intelligence (AI) research. In the first part of this article we will shortly introduce some recent theoretical and experimental issues related to our approach in SB, discussing their relevance and potentiality in the field. Next, we define an original SB research programme that aims at contributing to the development of bio-chem-ICTs and AI based on chemical communication between natural and synthetic cells. In particular we present (i) a mathematical model that allows us to simulate the main features of the system under construction; and (ii) preliminary wet-lab experiments showing the feasibility of our research programme. Based on the bottom-up construction of synthetic cells, the traits of this novel approach and their connections with recent conceptual and technological trends are finally discussed.

Life, Autonomy and Cognition: An Organizational Approach to the Definition of the Universal Properties of Life

This article addresses the issue of defining the universal properties of living systems through an organizational approach, according to which the distinctive properties of life lie in the functional organization which correlates its physicochemical components in living systems, and not in these components taken separately. Drawing on arguments grounded in this approach, this article identifies autonomy, with a set of related organizational properties, as universal properties of life, and includes cognition within this set.

Towards an Autopoietic Redefinition of Life

In this paper we develop the autopoietic approach to the definition of the living developed by Maturana and Varela in the Seventies. Starting from very simple observations concerning the phenomenology of life, we propose a reformulation of the autopoietic original definition of life which integrates some of the contemporary criticism to it. Our definitional proposal, aiming to stimulate the further development of the autopoietic approach, expresses what remains implicit in the definition of the living originally given by Maturana and Varela: life, as self-production, is a process of cognitive coupling with the environment.

Chemical communication between synthetic and natural cells: a possible experimental design.

The bottom-up construction of synthetic cells is one of the most intriguing and interesting research arenas in synthetic biology. Synthetic cells are built by encapsulating biomolecules inside lipid vesicles (liposomes), allowing the synthesis of one or more functional proteins. Thanks to the in situ synthesized proteins, synthetic cells become able to perform several biomolecular functions, which can be exploited for a large variety of applications. This paves the way to several advanced uses of synthetic cells in basic science and biotechnology, thanks to their versatility, modularity, biocompatibility, and programmability. In the previous WIVACE (2012) we presented the state-of-the-art of semi-synthetic minimal cell (SSMC) technology and introduced, for the first time, the idea of chemical communication between synthetic cells and natural cells. The development of a proper synthetic communication protocol should be seen as a tool for the nascent field of bio/chemical-based Information and Communication Technologies (bio-chem-ICTs) and ultimately aimed at building soft-wet-micro-robots. In this contribution (WIVACE, 2013) we present a blueprint for realizing this project, and show some preliminary experimental results. We firstly discuss how our research goal (based on the natural capabilities of biological systems to manipulate chemical signals) finds a proper place in the current scientific and technological contexts. Then, we shortly comment on the experimental approaches from the viewpoints of (i) synthetic cell construction, and (ii) bioengineering of microorganisms, providing up-to-date results from our laboratory. Finally, we shortly discuss how autopoiesis can be used as a theoretical framework for defining synthetic minimal life, minimal cognition, and as bridge between synthetic biology and artificial intelligence.

Question 9: Theoretical and Artificial Construction of the Living: Redefining the Approach from an Autopoietic Point of View

In this article, we would like to discuss some aspects of a theoretical framework for Artificial Life, focusing on the problem of an explicit definition of living systems useful for an effective artificial construction of them. The limits of a descriptive approach will be critically discussed, and a constructive (synthetic) approach will be proposed on the basis of the autopoietic theory of Maturana and Varela.

Artificial Empathy: An Interdisciplinary Investigation

One central issue in social robotics research is the question of the affective involvement of users. The problem of creating a robot able to establish and to participate competently in dynamic affective exchanges with human partners has been recognized as fundamental, especially for the success of projects involving assistive or educational robotics. This locates social robotics at the crossroad of many interconnected issues related to various disciplines, such as epistemology, cognitive science, sociology and ethics. Among these issues are, for example, the epistemological and theoretical problems of defining how emotions can be represented in a robot and under which conditions robots are able to participate effectively in emotional and empathic dynamics with human beings. Can robots experience emotions, or can they only express them? If we identify robotic ‘emotions’ as ‘pure simulations’, to which no actual inner experience corresponds, what are the conditions under which we can consider robots as authentic partners in emotional and empathic relations? These questions are related, on the one hand, to basic scientific research, to which robotics can contribute through operational models and experimentation carried out with the

Towards the Engineering of Chemical Communication Between Semi-Synthetic and Natural Cells

The recent advancements in semi-synthetic minimal cell (SSMC) technology pave the way for several interesting scenarios that span from basic scientific advancements to applications in biotechnology. In this short chapter we discuss the relevance of establishing chemical communication between synthetic and natural cells as an important conceptual issue and then discuss it as a new bio/chemical-information and communication technology. To this aim, the state of the art of SSMCs technology is shortly reviewed, and a possible experimental approach based on bacteria quorum sensing mechanisms is proposed and discussed.

On the emergence of biology from chemistry: a discontinuist perspective from the point of view of stability and regulation.

In this paper we argue that molecular evolution, and the evolution of prebiotic and early biological systems are qualitatively different processes, in which a crucial role is played respectively by structural stability and by dynamical mechanisms of regulation and integration. These different features entail also distinct modalities of interaction between system and environment that need to be taken into consideration when discussing molecular and biological evolution and selection.

Molecular Communication Technology: General Considerations on the Use of Synthetic Cells and Some Hints from In Silico Modelling

Recent advancements in synthetic biology pave the way to the design and construction of synthetic cells of increasing complexity, capable of performing specific functions in programmable manner. One of the most exciting goal is the development of a molecular communication technology based on the exchange of chemical signals between synthetic and natural cells. We are currently involved in such a research program. Following our previous contributions to WIVACE workshops (2012–2013), here we present the project, and discuss some general considerations on the use of synthetic cells for developing novel bio-chemical Information and Communication Technologies (bio-chem-ICTs). Moreover, by analysing in detail a mathematical model of synthetic cell/natural cell communication process, we provide some hints that can be valuable for the next experimental steps.