Evolution and development operate at different timescales; generations for the one, a lifetime for the other. These two processes, the basis of much of life on earth, interact in many non-trivial ways, but their temporal hierarchy -- evolution overarching development -- is observed for most multicellular lifeforms. When designing robots however, this tenet lifts: it becomes -- however natural -- a design choice. We propose to inverse this temporal hierarchy and design a developmental process happening at the phylogenetic timescale. Over a classic evolutionary search aimed at finding good gaits for tentacle 2D robots, we add a developmental process over the robots' morphologies. Within a generation, the morphology of the robots does not change. But from one generation to the next, the morphology develops. Much like we become bigger, stronger, and heavier as we age, our robots are bigger, stronger and heavier with each passing generation. Our robots start with baby morphologies, and a few thousand generations later, end-up with adult ones. We show that this produces better and qualitatively different gaits than an evolutionary search with only adult robots, and that it prevents premature convergence by fostering exploration. In addition, we validate our method on voxel lattice 3D robots from the literature and compare it to a recent evolutionary developmental approach. Our method is conceptually simple, and can be effective on small or large populations of robots, and intrinsic to the robot and its morphology, not the task or environment. Furthermore, by recasting the evolutionary search as a learning process, these results can be viewed in the context of developmental learning robotics.
翻译:进化和开发在不同的时间尺度上运作; 代代相传, 代代相传, 代代相传。 这两个过程, 地球上许多生命的基础, 以许多非三维方式互动, 以许多非三维方式互动, 但是它们的时间等级 -- 进化总体发展 -- 对大多数多细胞生命体来说都是观察的。 但是, 当设计机器人时, 这个特质提升了: 它变得 -- -- 不论多么自然 -- -- 是一种设计选择。 我们建议改变这个时间等级, 设计一个在植物遗传时间尺度上发生的发展进程。 传统的进化搜索旨在为触摸 2D 机器人寻找好听的音调, 我们在机器人形态上添加了一个发展过程。 在一代中, 机器人的形态变化不会改变。 但是从一代到下一代, 形态发展形态发展过程会变异, 我们的机器人会变异化过程会变得更大, 我们的机器人会变大。