Towards an artificial neural network-based simulator for behavioural evolution in evolutionary robotics

Abstract

It is not apparent to employ an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) as simulator structure during the Evolutionary Robotics (ER) process. Consequently, the potential for the use of an ANN in this regard has been investigated in this paper. This simulator Neural Network (NN) was trained to predict changes in the position and orientation resulting from arbitrary motor commands sent to a Lego Mindstorms NXT robot moving in a two-dimensional plane. The proposed NN simulator was employed as an alternative to conventional physics-engine based simulators to evolve simple navigation behaviour in said robot and encouraging results were obtained.