On the origin of environments by means of natural selection

Abstract

The eld of adaptive robotics involves simulations and real-world implementations of robots which adapt to their environments. In this paper we introduce adaptive environmentics|the ip side of adaptive robotics|in which the environment adapts to the robot. To illustrate the approach we oer three simple experiments in which a genetic algorithm is used to shape an environment for a simulated Khepera robot. We then discuss at length the potential of adaptive environmentics, also delineating several possible avenues of future research.