Implementation of an immuno-genetic network on a real Khepera II robot

Abstract

The design of autonomous navigation systems for mobile robots, with simultaneous objectives to be satisfied such as garbage collection with integrity maintenance, requires refined coordination mechanisms to deal with modules of elementary behaviour. This paper shows the implementation on a real Khepera II robot of an immuno-genetic network for autonomous navigation that combines an evolutionary algorithm with a continuous immune network model. The proposed immuno-genetic system has the immune network implementing a dynamic process of decision-making, and the evolutionary algorithm defining the network structure. To be able to evaluate the controllers (immune networks) on the evolutionary process, a virtual environment was used for computer simulation, based on the characteristics of the navigation problem. The immune networks obtained by evolution were then analyzed and tested on new situations, presenting coordination capability in simple and more complex tasks. Some preliminary experiments on a real Khepera II robot demonstrate the feasibility of the evolved immune networks.