A robotic ecosystem with evolvable minds and bodies

Berend Weel, Emanuele Crosato, Jacqueline Heinerman, Evert Haasdijk, A.E. Eiben
2014 2014 IEEE International Conference on Evolvable Systems  
This paper presents a proof of concept demonstration of a novel evolutionary robotic system where robots can self-reproduce. We construct and investigate a strongly embodied evolutionary system, where not only the controllers, but also the morphologies undergo evolution in an on-line fashion. Forced by the lack of available hardware we build this system in simulation. However, we use a high quality simulator (Webots) and an existing hardware platform (Roombots) which makes the system, in
more » ... le, constructible. Our system can be perceived as an Artificial Life habitat, where robots with evolvable bodies and minds live in an arena and actively induce an evolutionary process 'from within', without a central evolutionary agency or a userdefined synthetic fitness function.
doi:10.1109/ices.2014.7008736 dblp:conf/ices/WeelCHHE14 fatcat:tl5p4rp7gzh6dftywgjlwfq4qi