Interdisciplinary Workshop on Mechanical Intelligence: Summary Report

Victoria A. Webster-Wood; Nicholas Gravish; Amir Alavi; Andres F Arrieta; Sarah Bergbreiter; Anthony Bloch; Laura Blumenschein; C. Chase Cao; Aja Mia Carter; Paolo Celli; Tony Chen; Margaret Coad; Mark Cutkosky; Michael Dickey; Brian Do; Robert Full; Mahdi Haghshenas-Jaryani; Kaushik Jayaram; Aaron Johnson; Eva Kanso; Emma Lejeune; Chen Li; Suyi Li; Jeffrey Lipton; Rob MacCurdy; Matt McHenry; Jean-Michel Mongeau; Todd Murphey; Mark Plecnik; Jordan Raney; Ryan D. Sochol; Hannah Stuart; Zeynep Temel; Michael Tolley; Barry Trimmer; T. J. Wallin; Kon-Well Wang; Wenzhong Yan; Mark Yim; Wenlong Zhang

arXiv · 2604.16381

Interdisciplinary Workshop on Mechanical Intelligence: Summary Report

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Abstract

This report provides a summary of the outcomes of the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Mechanical Intelligence held in 2024. Mechanical Intelligence (MI) represents the phenomenon that novel structural features of material/biological/robotic systems can encode intelligence through responsiveness, adaptivity, memory, and learning in the mechanical structure itself. This is in contrast to computational intelligence, wherein the intelligence functions occur through electrical signaling and computer code. The two-day workshop was held at NSF headquarters on May 30-31 and included 38 invited academic researcher participants, and 8 program officers from the NSF. The workshop was structured around active small and large group discussions in groups of 4-5 and 9-10 with the goal of addressing topical questions on MI. Working groups entered notes into shared presentation slides for each discussion session and presented their outcomes in a final presentation on the last day. Here we summarize the overall outcomes of the workshop.

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Victoria A. Webster-Wood, Nicholas Gravish, Amir Alavi, Andres F Arrieta, Sarah Bergbreiter, Anthony Bloch, Laura Blumenschein, C. Chase Cao, Aja Mia Carter, Paolo Celli, Tony Chen, Margaret Coad, Mark Cutkosky, Michael Dickey, Brian Do, Robert Full, Mahdi Haghshenas-Jaryani, Kaushik Jayaram, Aaron Johnson, Eva Kanso, Emma Lejeune, Chen Li, Suyi Li, Jeffrey Lipton, Rob MacCurdy, Matt McHenry, Jean-Michel Mongeau, Todd Murphey, Mark Plecnik, Jordan Raney, Ryan D. Sochol, Hannah Stuart, Zeynep Temel, Michael Tolley, Barry Trimmer, T. J. Wallin, Kon-Well Wang, Wenzhong Yan, Mark Yim, Wenlong Zhang. 2026-03-25. Interdisciplinary Workshop on Mechanical Intelligence: Summary Report. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.16381

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