Advanced Topics in Computer Science: Artificial Mechanical Intelligence

Mechanical intelligence, also referred to as "morphological computation", is the idea that the physical dynamics of an actuator may interact with a control system to effectively reduce the computational burden of solving the control task. Biological systems exhibit mechanical intelligence in a variety of ways, from the compliance of digits in primate grasping, to the natural frequencies of legged locomotion to dead fish being able to "swim" in vortices. How can we build artificial systems that exhibit these traits?