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| Category: | General - Books | By: | The MIT Press |
| More info: | mitpress.mit.edu | Author(s): | Stefano Nolfi, Dario Floreano |
| Pages: | 320 | Year of publication: | 2000 |
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Evolutionary robotics is a new technique for the
automatic creation of autonomous robots. Inspired by the
Darwinian principle of selective reproduction of the fittest,
it views robots as autonomous artificial organisms that
develop their own skills in close interaction with
the environment and without human intervention. Drawing heavily
on biology and ethology, it uses the tools
of neural networks, genetic algorithms, dynamic systems, and
biomorphic engineering. The resulting robots share with simple
biological systems the characteristics of robustness, simplicity, small
size, flexibility, and modularity.
In evolutionary robotics, an initial
population of artificial chromosomes, each encoding the control
system of a robot, is randomly created and
put into the environment. Each robot is then
free to act (move, look around, manipulate) according
to its genetically specified controller while its performance
on various tasks is automatically evaluated. The fittest
robots then "reproduce" by swapping parts of their
genetic material with small random mutations. The process
is repeated until the "birth" of a robot
that satisfies the performance criteria.This book describes the
basic concepts and methodologies of evolutionary robotics and
the results achieved so far. An important feature
is the clear presentation of a set of
empirical experiments of increasing complexity. Software with a
graphic interface, freely available on a Web page,
will allow the reader to replicate and vary
(in simulation and on real robots) most of
the experiments.