The natural way to evolve hardware

Abstract

Artificial evolution can automatically derive the configuration of a reconfigurable hardware system such that it performs a given task. Individuals of the evolving population are evaluated when instantiated as real circuits, so if constraints inherent to human design (but not to evolution) are dropped, then the natural physical dynamics of the hardware can be exploited in new ways. The notion of an artificially evolving 'species' (SAGA) allows the open-ended incremental evolution of complex circuits. Theoretical arguments are given, as well as the real-world example of an evolved hardware robot controller.