Evolutionary robotics-an overview

Abstract

The field of evolutionary robotics (ER) emerged as an important recent addition to intelligent robotic research in the early 1990s. It currently deals mostly with the evolution of control software for mobile robots with the goal of developing competent robots that perform tasks well adapted to the requirements in a given operational environment and is also being extended to hardware evolution. This paper is partly based on results of a survey conducted of key evolutionary robotic research activities worldwide. Included in the survey are research activities in such places as Sussex University, Stanford University, Case Western Reserve University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne (EPFL) and University of Trieste.