Automating Automation: Lessons from R.U.R about the Future of Evolutionary Robotics

Nitschke, G (2020) Automating Automation: Lessons from R.U.R about the Future of Evolutionary Robotics, Robot 100, VŠCHT Praha.

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Abstract

R.U.R: Rossum’s Universal Robots presents a narrative that discusses the age-old postulate for what separates humankind and automatons. That is, the dichotomy between us and them is that our mechanical servants (robots) are made not born. Self-replication has been a long standing open research problem and topic of discussion in artificial life, with a range of highly anticipated future macro-robotic to nano-robotic applications. More recently, self-replication has been the subject of some research attention in the relatively embryonic field of evolutionary robotics and the topic has even enjoyed some international media attention. One observation drawn from evolutionary robotics research as a whole, is that much like the robots of R.U.R, current experimental evolutionary robotic systems are inexorably tied to their system designers. Dissimilar to the biological counter-parts that they aspire to, such robotic systems are not self-sufficient. Even though such robots have some autonomy in specific environments, they are unable to autonomously propagate and improve their body-brain design on an evolutionary time-scale.

Item Type:	Book chapter
Subjects:	Computing methodologies > Machine learning
Date Deposited:	03 Dec 2021 11:28
Last Modified:	03 Dec 2021 11:28
URI:	https://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/id/eprint/1498

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