Evolutionary Robotics At Sussex

We give an overview of evolutionary robotics research at Sussex. We explain and justify our distinctive approaches to (artificial) evolution, and to the nature of robot control systems that are evolved. We illustrate by presenting results from research with evolved controllers for autonomous mobile robots; simulated robots, coevolved animats, real robots with software controllers or with a controller directly evolved in hardware. KEYWORDS: Evolutionary Robotics, Artificial Evolution WHY EVOLUTIONARY ROBOTICS? When designing a control system for a robot, there are at least three major problems: ffl It is not clear how a robot control system should be decomposed. ffl Interactions between separate sub-systems are not limited to directly visible connecting links, but also include interactions mediated via the environment. ffl As system complexity grows, the number of potential interactions between sub-parts of the system grows exponentially. Classical approaches to robotics have ofte..