Automating Robot Design with Multi-Level Evolution

Nitschke, Geoff and Howard, David and Aslan, Bilal (2024) Automating Robot Design with Multi-Level Evolution, Proceedings of IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE CEC 2024), 30 June - 5 July, Yokohama, Japan, IEEE Press.

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Abstract

In evolutionary robotics, Multi-Level Evolution (MLE) has been demonstrated for effective robot designs using a bottom-up approach, first evolving which materials to use for modular components and then how these components are connected into a functional robot design. This paper evaluates MLE robotic design, as an evolutionary design method on various task (robot ambulation) environments in comparison to human designed robots (pre-designed robot controller-morphology couplings). Results indicate that the MLE method evolves robots that are effective across increasingly difficult (locomotion) task environments, out-performing pre-designed robots, and thus provide further support for the efficacy of MLE as an evolutionary robotic design method. Furthermore, results indicate the MLE method enables the evolution of suitable robotic designs for various environments, where such designs would be non-intuitive and unlikely in conventional robotic design.

Item Type: Conference paper
Subjects: Computing methodologies > Artificial intelligence
Computer systems organization > Embedded and cyber-physical systems > Robotics
Date Deposited: 19 Jun 2024 11:07
Last Modified: 19 Jun 2024 11:07
URI: https://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/id/eprint/1659

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