Evolutionary fabrication

Abstract

Evolutionary Design Systems (EDSs) have demonstrated the ability to generate a wide array of novel objects, including robots, tables, and antennas. Often, the novelty of these evolved designs is due to their ability to discover and exploit important principles of the design space, such as the truss and the ratchet. One current obstacle to the real-world application of such EDSs is that they often create purely descriptive representations, and are therefore capable of generating designs whose specific assembly is difficult, if not impossible, to infer. One solution that we offer is to evolve how to build, rather than what to build. When evolution occurs in assembly space rather than design space, only buildable objects are produced. Furthermore, as we demonstrate in this paper, doing so allows for the emergence not just of novel designs, but of novel means of assembly.