30 research outputs found
Evolutionary design of soft-bodied animats with decentralized control
We show how a biologically inspired model of multicellular development combined with a simulated evolutionary process can be used to design the morphologies and controllers of soft-bodied virtual animats. An animatâs morphology is the result of a developmental process that starts from a single cell and goes through many cell divisions, during which cells interact via simple physical rules. Every cell contains the same genome, which encodes a gene regulatory network (GRN) controlling its behavior. After the developmental stage, locomotion emerges from the coordinated activity of the GRNs across the virtual robot body. Since cells act autonomously, the behavior of the animat is generated in a truly decentralized fashion. The movement of the animat is produced by the contraction and expansion of parts of the body, caused by the cells, and is simulated using a physics engine. Our system makes possible the evolution and development of animats that can run, swim, and actively navigate toward a target in a virtual environment
Evolving soft locomotion in aquatic and terrestrial environments: effects of material properties and environmental transitions
Designing soft robots poses considerable challenges: automated design
approaches may be particularly appealing in this field, as they promise to
optimize complex multi-material machines with very little or no human
intervention. Evolutionary soft robotics is concerned with the application of
optimization algorithms inspired by natural evolution in order to let soft
robots (both morphologies and controllers) spontaneously evolve within
physically-realistic simulated environments, figuring out how to satisfy a set
of objectives defined by human designers. In this paper a powerful evolutionary
system is put in place in order to perform a broad investigation on the
free-form evolution of walking and swimming soft robots in different
environments. Three sets of experiments are reported, tackling different
aspects of the evolution of soft locomotion. The first two sets explore the
effects of different material properties on the evolution of terrestrial and
aquatic soft locomotion: particularly, we show how different materials lead to
the evolution of different morphologies, behaviors, and energy-performance
tradeoffs. It is found that within our simplified physics world stiffer robots
evolve more sophisticated and effective gaits and morphologies on land, while
softer ones tend to perform better in water. The third set of experiments
starts investigating the effect and potential benefits of major environmental
transitions (land - water) during evolution. Results provide interesting
morphological exaptation phenomena, and point out a potential asymmetry between
land-water and water-land transitions: while the first type of transition
appears to be detrimental, the second one seems to have some beneficial
effects.Comment: 37 pages, 22 figures, currently under review (journal
Material properties affect evolution's ability to exploit morphological computation in growing soft-bodied creatures
The concept of morphological computation holds that the
body of an agent can, under certain circumstances, exploit
the interaction with the environment to achieve useful behavior,
potentially reducing the computational burden of
the brain/controller. The conditions under which such phenomenon
arises are, however, unclear. We hypothesize that
morphological computation will be facilitated by body plans
with appropriate geometric, material, and growth properties,
while it will be hindered by other body plans in which one or
more of these three properties is not well suited to the task.
We test this by evolving the geometries and growth processes
of soft robots, with either manually-set softer or stiffer material
properties. Results support our hypothesis: we find that
for the task investigated, evolved softer robots achieve better
performances with simpler growth processes than evolved
stiffer ones. We hold that the softer robots succeed because
they are better able to exploit morphological computation.
This four-way interaction among geometry, growth, material
properties and morphological computation is but one example
phenomenon that can be investigated using the system here
introduced, that could enable future studies on the evolution
and development of generic soft-bodied creatures
Self-organization of Symbiotic Multicellular Structures
International audienceThis paper presents a new model for the development of artificial creatures from a single cell. The model aims at providing a more biologically plausible abstraction of the morphogenesis and the specialization process, which the organogenesis follows. It is built upon three main elements: a cellular physics system that simulates division and intercellular adhesion dynamics, a simplified cell cycle offering to the cells the possibility to select actions such as division, quiescence, differentiation or apoptosis and, finally, a cell specialization mechanism quantifying the ability to perform different functions. An evolved artificial gene regulatory network is employed as a cell controller. As a proof-of-concept, we present two experiments where the morphology of a multicellular organism is guided by cell weaknesses and efficiency at performing different functions under environmental stress
Toward Organogenesis of Artificial Creatures
International audienceThis paper presents a new model for the development of artificial creatures from a single cell. The model aims at providing a more biologically plausible abstraction of the morphogenesis and the specialization process, which the organogenesis follows. It is built upon three main elements: a cellular physics simulation, a simplified cell cycle using an evolved artificial gene regulatory network and a cell specialization mechanism quantifying the ability to perform different functions. As a proof-of-concept, we present a first experiment where the morphology of a multicellular organism is guided by cell weaknesses and efficiency at performing different functions under environmental stress
Self-organization of Symbiotic Multicellular Structures
This paper presents a new model for the development of artificial creatures from a single cell. The model aims at providing a more biologically plausible abstraction of the morphogenesis and the specialization process, which the organogenesis follows. It is built upon three main elements: a cellular physics system that simulates division and intercellular adhesion dynamics, a simplified cell cycle offering to the cells the possibility to select actions such as division, quiescence, differentiation or apoptosis and, finally, a cell specialization mechanism quantifying the ability to perform different functions. An evolved artificial gene regulatory network is employed as a cell controller. As a proof-of-concept, we present two experiments where the morphology of a multicellular organism is guided by cell weaknesses and efficiency at performing different functions under environmental stress
Unshackling evolution: evolving soft robots with multiple materials and a powerful generative encoding
In 1994 Karl Sims showed that computational evolution can produce interesting morphologies that resemble natural organisms. Despite nearly two decades of work since, evolved morphologies are not obviously more complex or natural, and the field seems to have hit a complexity ceiling. One hypothesis for the lack of increased complexity is that most work, including Simsâ, evolves morphologies composed of rigid elements, such as solid cubes and cylinders, limiting the design space. A second hypothesis is that the encodings of previous work have been overly regular, not allowing complex regularities with variation. Here we test both hypotheses by evolving soft robots with multiple materials and a powerful generative encoding called a compositional pattern-producing network (CPPN). Robots are selected for locomotion speed. We find that CPPNs evolve faster robots than a direct encoding and that the CPPN morphologies appear more natural. We also find that locomotion performance increases as more materials are added, that diversity of form and behavior can be increased with diâ”erent cost functions without stifling performance, and that organisms can be evolved at diâ”erent levels of resolution. These findings suggest the ability of generative soft-voxel systems to scale towards evolving a large diversity of complex, natural, multi-material creatures. Our results suggest that future work that combines the evolution of CPPNencoded soft, multi-material robots with modern diversityencouraging techniques could finally enable the creation of creatures far more complex and interesting than those produced by Sims nearly twenty years ago
Evolving Soft Robots with Vibration Based Movement
Creating eïŹective designs for soft robots is extremely diïŹcult due to the large number of diïŹerent possibilities for shape, material properties, and movement mechanisms. Due to the lack of methods to design soft robots, previous research has used evolutionary algorithms to tackle this problem of overwhelming options. A popular technique is to use generative encodings to create designs using evolutionary algorithms because of their modularity and ability to induce large scale coordinated change. The main drawback of generative encodings is that it is diïŹcult to know where along the ontogenic trajectory resides the phenotype with the highest ïŹtness. The two main approaches for addressing this issue are static and scaled developmental timings. In order to compare the eïŹectiveness of each of these two approaches, I have implemented a framework capable of evolving soft robot designs that utilize vibration as a movement mechanism
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Moving softly : the role of morphological computation in the generation of intelligent behaviour
The central theme of this thesis is âmorphological computationâ, in particular as it pertains to the generation of purposeful and intelligent behaviour.
The first part of the thesis covers experiments in simulations, aimed at exploring a previously unasked question: can genuinely computational soft-body reservoirs play a central role in generating behaviour which has previously been described as âminimally cognitiveâ? We conclude in the affirmative, but also note that it remains unclear whether or how they can also exceed such abilities. The main part of this work has been presented at ALIFE 14 and ECAL 15, and published in the Artificial Life journal.
In part two, the focus moves to consideration of how morphological computation in soft bodies may collude with the action of nervous systems in the production of adaptive intelligent behaviour. The massive and hypnotic complexity of brains in present day species, and lasting traditions in the design and control of animalsâ mechanical analogies (robots), still lead many to perceive bodies in the neuromuscular species as being in service to the goals of their controllers (brains), but in fact the two are of a piece, and work together to the same ends. We hypothesise that this would have been more apparent than now at a time closer to the evolutionary introduction of neuromuscular systems, and introduce our new software framework for the evolution of virtual neuromuscular swimmers, which may be used to study artificial parallels to those distant origins. We begin with a demonstration of the technical innovations which we required in order to simulate soft-bodied swimmers in two-dimensional particle-based fluids, and then proceed to a description of our new concept for mapping arbitrary neural networks to arbitrary body morphologies