Environmental influences on evolvable robots.

Journal: PloS one
Published Date:

Abstract

The field of Evolutionary Robotics addresses the challenge of automatically designing robotic systems. Furthermore, the field can also support biological investigations related to evolution. In this paper, we evolve (simulated) modular robots under diverse environmental conditions and analyze the influences that these conditions have on the evolved morphologies, controllers, and behavior. To this end, we introduce a set of morphological, controller, and behavioral descriptors that together span a multi-dimensional trait space. Using these descriptors, we demonstrate how changes in environmental conditions induce different levels of differentiation in this trait space. Our main goal is to gain deeper insights into the effect of the environment on a robotic evolutionary process.

Authors

  • Karine Miras
    Computer Science Department/Computational Intelligence Group Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
  • Eliseo Ferrante
    Laboratory of Socio-Ecology and Social Evolution, Zoological Institute, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
  • A E Eiben
    VU University.