Evolutionary robotics is an
embodied approach to
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
(AI) in which
robots" \n\n\n\n\n\n\nrobots.txt is the filename used for implementing the Robots Exclusion Protocol, a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the website they are allowed to visit.\n\nThe sta ...
are automatically designed using
Darwinian
''Darwinism'' is a term used to describe a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others. The theory states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural sele ...
principles of
natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the Heredity, heritable traits characteristic of a population over generation ...
.
The design of a robot, or a subsystem of a robot such as a
neural controller, is optimized against a
behavioral goal (e.g. run as fast as possible). Usually, designs are evaluated in
simulations
A simulation is an imitative representation of a process or system that could exist in the real world. In this broad sense, simulation can often be used interchangeably with model. Sometimes a clear distinction between the two terms is made, in ...
as fabricating thousands or millions of designs and testing them in the real world is prohibitively expensive in terms of time, money, and safety.
An evolutionary robotics experiment starts with a population of randomly generated robot designs. The worst performing designs are discarded and replaced with
mutations
In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mitosi ...
and/or
combinations
In mathematics, a combination is a selection of items from a set that has distinct members, such that the order of selection does not matter (unlike permutations). For example, given three fruits, say an apple, an orange and a pear, there are t ...
of the better designs. This
evolutionary algorithm
Evolutionary algorithms (EA) reproduce essential elements of the biological evolution in a computer algorithm in order to solve "difficult" problems, at least Approximation, approximately, for which no exact or satisfactory solution methods are k ...
continues until a prespecified amount of time elapses or some target performance metric is surpassed.
Evolutionary robotics methods are particularly useful for engineering machines that must operate in environments in which humans have limited intuition (nanoscale, space, etc.). Evolved simulated robots can also be used as scientific tools to generate new hypotheses in biology and cognitive science, and to test old hypothesis that require experiments that have proven difficult or impossible to carry out in reality.
History
In the early 1990s, two separate European groups demonstrated different approaches to the evolution of robot control systems.
Dario Floreano and
Francesco Mondada at
EPFL evolved controllers for the
Khepera robot.
Adrian Thompson, Nick Jakobi,
Dave Cliff,
Inman Harvey, and
Phil Husbands evolved controllers for a Gantry robot at the
University of Sussex
The University of Sussex is a public university, public research university, research university located in Falmer, East Sussex, England. It lies mostly within the city boundaries of Brighton and Hove. Its large campus site is surrounded by the ...
.
However the body of these robots was presupposed before evolution.
The first simulations of evolved robots were reported by
Karl Sims and Jeffrey Ventrella of the
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...
, also in the early 1990s.
However these so-called virtual creatures never left their
simulated worlds. The first evolved robots to be built in reality were 3D-printed by
Hod Lipson and
Jordan Pollack at
Brandeis University
Brandeis University () is a Private university, private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. It is located within the Greater Boston area. Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian, non-sectarian, coeducational university, Bra ...
at the turn of the 21st century.
See also
*
Bio-inspired robotics
Bio-inspired robotic locomotion is a subcategory of bio-inspired design. It is about learning concepts from nature and applying them to the design of real-world engineered systems. More specifically, this field is about making robots that are insp ...
*
Evolutionary computation
Evolutionary computation from computer science is a family of algorithms for global optimization inspired by biological evolution, and the subfield of artificial intelligence and soft computing studying these algorithms. In technical terms ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Evolutionary Robotics
Evolutionary computation
Robotics