# Collective control of modular soft robots via embodied Spiking Neural Cellular Automata

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.02099 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02099/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Apr 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [One Policy to Control Them All: Shared Modular Policies for Agent-Agnostic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.04976/) (2020)
- [Learning to Control Self-Assembling Morphologies: A Study of Generalization via Modularity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.05546/) (2019)
- [Growing 3D Artefacts and Functional Machines with Neural Cellular Automata](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.08737/) (2021)
- [Benchmarking Keyword Spotting Efficiency on Neuromorphic Hardware](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01739/) (2018)
- [Spiking Neural Networks Hardware Implementations and Challenges: a Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.01467/) (2020)
- [Towards self-organized control: Using neural cellular automata to robustly control a cart-pole agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15240/) (2021)
- [Regenerating Soft Robots through Neural Cellular Automata](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02579/) (2021)
- [How morphological development can guide evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07387/) (2017)
- [Evolving soft locomotion in aquatic and terrestrial environments: effects of material properties and environmental transitions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06605/) (2017)
- [Design, Validation, and Case Studies of 2D-VSR-Sim, an Optimization-friendly Simulator of 2-D Voxel-based Soft Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08617/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Embodied Co-Design for Rapidly Evolving Agents: Taxonomy, Frontiers, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04770/) (2025)
- [Emergent Dynamics in Neural Cellular Automata](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06406/) (2024)
- [The Generalist Brain Module: Module Repetition in Neural Networks in Light of the Minicolumn Hypothesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12473/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Voxel-based Soft Robots (VSRs) are a form of modular soft robots, composed of several deformable cubes, i.e., voxels. Each VSR is thus an ensemble of simple agents, namely the voxels, which must cooperate to give rise to the overall VSR behavior. Within this paradigm, collective intelligence plays a key role in enabling the emerge of coordination, as each voxel is independently controlled, exploiting only the local sensory information together with some knowledge passed from its direct neighbors (distributed or collective control). In this work, we propose a novel form of collective control, influenced by Neural Cellular Automata (NCA) and based on the bio-inspired Spiking Neural Networks: the embodied Spiking NCA (SNCA). We experiment with different variants of SNCA, and find them to be competitive with the state-of-the-art distributed controllers for the task of locomotion. In addition, our findings show significant improvement with respect to the baseline in terms of adaptability to unforeseen environmental changes, which could be a determining factor for physical practicability of VSRs.