Scalable Evolution of Robot Morphology

Morphological Modularity Can Enable the Evolution of Robot Behavior to Scale Linearly with the Number of Environmental Features

In evolutionary robotics, populations of robots are typically trained in simulation before one or more of them are instantiated as physical robots. However, in order to evolve robust behavior, each robot must be evaluated in multiple environments. If an environment is characterized by f free parameters, each of which can take one of np features, each robot must be evaluated in all np environmen...

Scalable Co-Optimization of Morphology and Control in Embodied Machines

Evolution sculpts both the body plans and nervous systems of agents together over time. In contrast, in AI and robotics, a robot’s body plan is usually designed by hand, and control policies are then optimized for that fixed design. The task of simultaneously co-optimizing the morphology and controller of an embodied robot has remained a challenge. In psychology, the theory of embodied cognitio...

A Scalable Architecture for Multi Agent Vision Based Robot Scavenging

This paper outlines the technical details and presents early results from our multi agent robot scavenging system, as demonstrated at the 2006 AAAI Robot Exhibition and Scavenger Hunt Competition. Our system is designed to be easily scalable in the number of agents, which are currently limited to Evolution ER1 laptop robots capable of monocular vision. Each individual robot possesses the abilit...

Tumor Detection and Morphology Assessment in the Liver Tissue Using an Automatic Tactile Robot

In this paper an automatic examination robot was developed to improve the process of cancer detection, tumor localization and geometrical shape diagnosis. A uniformly distributed compressive load was applied to the top tissue surface and the resultant mechanical stress was measured that was employed for the tumor diagnosis task. The experimental examinations were performed on the soft tissue of...

Simultaneous Evolution of Robot Control and Morphology : Thesis Proposal for