Exploiting inherent regularity in control of multilegged robot locomotion by evolving neural fields

Abstract

The control of multilegged robots is challenging because of the large number of sensors and actuators involved. However, the regularity inherent to gait control can be taken into account to design controllers for multilegged robots. In this paper, we show that NEATfields, a method designed for the evolution of large neural networks, can exploit this regularity to evolve significantly better gaits than those evolved by the standard NEAT method. We also show how evolved networks can control a robot with a ball-like morphology to move on a rough terrain. The success in evolving large neural networks suggests that the NEATfields method is a promising tool for studying complex behaviors in robotics and artificial life.