On the Effects of Epigenetic Programming on the Efficiency of Incremental Evolution of the Simulated Khepera Robot

Abstract

We present the results of our work on epigenetic programming (EP) and its application to navigation of mobile cleaning robot. We verify the effect of genetic switches and the feasibility of incorporating histones. The results show individuals applying Lamarckian EP have better quality and evolve faster than those in canonical genetic programming. Such an improved computational effort of evolution, however, is achieved at the cost of somehow decreased computational performance due to the additional overhead of manipulating the genetic switches. Our work could be seen as a verification of the accelerating effect of histones on adaptation and evolution in nature.