This research falls within evolutionary robotics and the larger taxonomy of cooperative multi-robot systems. A study of comparative methods to adapt the behaviors and morphologies of simulated robot teams that must solve a collective construction task is presented. Multiple versions of an indirect encoding (developmental) method for the artificial evolution of team behaviors and morphologies were tested. Results indicated the developmental method was able to evolve effective robot team morphologies in a collective construction task, where evolved teams yielded a task performance comparable to optimal team morphologies manually designed specifically for the collective construction task. Results also indicated that the developmental method was appropriate for evolving controllers that were able to generalize to a range of different team morphologies that also solved the collective construction task with a high degree of task performance
