Related papers: Comprehensive Survey of Evolutionary Morphological…
Many soft-body organisms found in nature flourish underwater. Similarly, soft robots are potentially well-suited for underwater environments partly because the problematic effects of gravity, friction, and harmonic oscillations are less…
Evolutionary Robotics offers the possibility to design robots to solve a specific task automatically by optimizing their morphology and control together. However, this co-optimization of body and control is challenging, because controllers…
If robots are to become ubiquitous, they will need to be able to adapt to complex and dynamic environments. Robots that can adapt their bodies while deployed might be flexible and robust enough to meet this challenge. Previous work on…
Continuum and soft robots can transform diverse sectors, including healthcare, agriculture, marine, and space, thanks to their potential to adaptively interact with unstructured environments. These robots exhibit complex mechanics that pose…
Biological systems are very robust to morphological damage, but artificial systems (robots) are currently not. In this paper we present a system based on neural cellular automata, in which locomoting robots are evolved and then given the…
Soft robots have demonstrated superior flexibility and functionality than conventional rigid robots. These versatile devices can respond to a wide range of external stimuli (including light, magnetic field, heat, electric field, etc.), and…
In this review we introduce the framework of reality-assisted evolution to summarize a growing trend towards combining model-based and model-free approaches to improve the design of physically embodied soft robots. In silico, data-driven…
Soft mobile robots have emerged as a promising area of research with potential applications in various disciplines including but not limited to search-and-rescue, service, surveillance, explorations, and manufacturing. In this article, we…
Soft robots promise inherent safety via their material compliance for seamless interactions with humans or delicate environments. Yet, their development is challenging because it requires integrating materials, geometry, actuation, and…
Robots and artificial machines have been captivating the public for centuries, depicted first as threats to humanity, then as subordinates and helpers. In the last decade, the booming exposure of humans to robots has fostered an increasing…
Internal computational models of physical bodies are fundamental to the ability of robots and animals alike to plan and control their actions. These "self-models" allow robots to consider outcomes of multiple possible future actions,…
Evolution by natural selection, which is one of the most compelling themes of modern science, brought forth evolutionary algorithms and evolutionary computation, applying mechanisms of evolution in nature to various problems solved by…
Soft robots show compliance and have infinite degrees of freedom. Thanks to these properties, such robots can be leveraged for surgery, rehabilitation, biomimetics, unstructured environment exploring, and industrial grippers. In this case,…
Soft robotics has emerged as a transformative technology in Search and Rescue (SAR) operations, addressing challenges in navigating complex, hazardous environments that often limit traditional rigid robots. This paper critically examines…
We present a comprehensive framework for studying and leveraging morphological symmetries in robotic systems. These are intrinsic properties of the robot's morphology, frequently observed in animal biology and robotics, which stem from the…
This article takes a step to provide humanoid robots with adaptive morphology abilities. We present a systematic approach for enabling robotic covers to morph their shape, with an overall size fitting the anthropometric dimensions of a…
Optimizing the body and brain of a robot is a coupled challenge: the morphology determines what control strategies are effective, while the control parameters influence how well the morphology performs. This joint optimization can be done…
Self-adaptive parameters are increasingly used in the field of Evolutionary Robotics, as they allow key evolutionary rates to vary autonomously in a context-sensitive manner throughout the optimisation process. A significant limitation to…
Soft robotics is an emerging field of research where the robot body is composed of compliant and soft materials. It allows the body to bend, twist, and deform to move or to adapt its shape to the environment for grasping, all of which are…
Evolution sculpts both the body plans and nervous systems of agents together over time. In contrast, in AI and robotics, a robot's body plan is usually designed by hand, and control policies are then optimized for that fixed design. The…