Co-evolving Control and Morphology with LEGO Robots

The Building Brains and Bodies approach to the design of taskfulfilling robots is introduced. In this approach, focus is on designing both controller and morphology of robots, and it thereby contrasts most research in adaptive robotics that puts emphasis on design of control exclusively. It is possible to coevolve robot control and morphology in simulation, and this work suggests that there exists important correlations between different body parameters (e.g. wheel base diameter, body size, and sensory range) in order to achieve optimal performance on specific tasks. The evolved morphology can be constructed with LEGO, and the evolved controller can be downloaded to the LEGO MINDSTORMS RCX. Hence, the experiments suggest a path towards automatic building plans for LEGO MINDSTORMS robots. Further, it is possible to manipulate the morphology in a user-guided approach of building modular LEGO robots, which allow children to construct their own robots within 10 minutes. Finally, the experiments give suggestion to new research on building blocks with processing power.