Using artificial evolution to design robots is a powerful technique. The difficult part is writing a simulation of the robot and its physical environment. A simulation is required so tens of thousands of design variations can be automatically tested as the evolution progresses.
What if you didn’t need to write a simulation? Imagine the robot could figure out how to simulate itself. Not only have you saved yourself a lot of programming, but the robot is now very resilient. You could snap off one of its legs, for example, and it would be able to re-simulate itself, and re-evolve a walking strategy.
Hod Lipson from Cornell University’s Computational Synthesis Lab has built such a robotic system. His robot first squirms around on the floor, testing theories about how its own motors work and what its own shape is. This simulation of itself is then used to evolve a walking strategy.
Such a system would be very useful for planetary exploration, where robot engineers may not be readily available to fix problems. If the machine breaks a leg, no problem. Re-simulate, re-evolve, and move on.
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