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European Workshop on Evolutionary Robotics

EvoRobots 1998: Evolutionary Robotics pp 192–210Cite as

Evolving and breeding robots

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1468))

Abstract

Our experiences with a range of evolutionary robotic experiments have resulted in major changes to our set-up of artificial life experiments and our interpretation of observed phenomena. Initially, we investigated simulation-reality relationships in order to transfer our artificial life simulation work with evolution of neural network agents to real robots. This is a difficult task, but can, in a lot of cases, be solved with a carefully built simulator. By being able to evolve control mechanisms for physical robots, we were able to study biological hypotheses about animal behaviours by using exactly the same experimental set-ups as were used in the animal behavioural experiments. Evolutionary robotic experiments with rats open field box experiments and chick detours show how evolutionary robotics can be a powerful biological tool, and they also suggest that incremental learning might be fruitful for achieving complex robot behaviour in an evolutionary context. However, it is not enough to evolve controllers alone, and we argue that robot body plans and controllers should co-evolve, which leads to an alternative form of evolvable hardware. By combining all these experiences, we reach breeding robotics. Here, children can, as breeders, evolve e.g. LEGO robots through an interactive genetic algorithm in order to achieve desired behaviours, and then download the evolved behaviours to the physical (LEGO) robots.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Danish National Centre for IT Research — CIT, University of Aarhus, Ny Munkegade, bldg. 540, 8000, Aarhus C., Denmark

    Henrik Hautop Lund

  2. Faculty of Psychology, II University of Naples, Viale Giovanni Paolo I, 81055, S. Maria C. V. (CE), Italy

    Orazio Miglino

Authors
  1. Henrik Hautop Lund
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  2. Orazio Miglino
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Philip Husbands Jean-Arcady Meyer

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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Lund, H.H., Miglino, O. (1998). Evolving and breeding robots. In: Husbands, P., Meyer, JA. (eds) Evolutionary Robotics. EvoRobots 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1468. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-64957-3_73

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-64957-3_73

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-64957-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49902-2

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