Related papers: Real World Morphological Evolution is Feasible
Every robot built to date was predesigned by an external process, prior to deployment. Here we show a robot that actively participates in its own design during its lifetime. Starting from a randomly assembled body, and using only…
Bio-hybrid systems---close couplings of natural organisms with technology---are high potential and still underexplored. In existing work, robots have mostly influenced group behaviors of animals. We explore the possibilities of mixing…
Artificially evolving foraging behavior in simulated legged animals has proved to be a notoriously difficult task. Here, we co-evolve the morphology and controller for virtual organisms in a three-dimensional physically realistic…
We propose to make the physical characteristics of a robot oscillate while it learns to improve its behavioral performance. We consider quantities such as mass, actuator strength, and size that are usually fixed in a robot, and show that…
Legged robot locomotion requires the planning of stable reference trajectories, especially while traversing uneven terrain. The proposed trajectory optimization framework is capable of generating dynamically stable base and footstep…
Aquatic creatures exhibit remarkable adaptations of their body to efficiently interact with the surrounding fluid. The tight coupling between their morphology, motion, and the environment are highly complex but serves as a valuable example…
Evolution and learning have historically been interrelated topics, and their interplay is attracting increased interest lately. The emerging new factor in this trend is morphological evolution, the evolution of physical forms within…
Numerous algorithms have been proposed to allow legged robots to learn to walk. However, the vast majority of these algorithms is devised to learn to walk in a straight line, which is not sufficient to accomplish any real-world mission.…
Soft-growing robots are innovative devices that feature plant-inspired growth to navigate environments. Thanks to their embodied intelligence of adapting to their surroundings and the latest innovation in actuation and manufacturing, it is…
The physical interaction of aerial robots with their environment has countless potential applications and is an emerging area with many open challenges. Fully-actuated multirotors have been introduced to tackle some of these challenges.…
This work provides a complete framework for the simulation, co-optimization, and sim-to-real transfer of the design and control of soft legged robots. The compliance of soft robots provides a form of "mechanical intelligence" -- the ability…
The design space of networked embedded systems is very large, posing challenges to the optimisation of such platforms when it comes to support applications with real-time guarantees. Recent research has shown that a number of inter-related…
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…
Soft growing robots are novel devices that mimic plant-like growth for navigation in cluttered or dangerous environments. Their ability to adapt to surroundings, combined with advancements in actuation and manufacturing technologies, allows…
Animals can accomplish many incredible behavioral feats across a wide range of operational environments and scales that current robots struggle to match. One explanation for this performance gap is the extraordinary properties of the…
Legged machines are becoming increasingly agile and adaptive but they have so far lacked the morphological diversity of legged animals, which have been rearranged and reshaped to fill millions of niches. Unlike their biological…
Evolutionary algorithms have been successfully applied to a variety of optimisation problems in stationary environments. However, many real world optimisation problems are set in dynamic environments where the success criteria shifts…
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…
Recent research on mobile robots has focused on increasing their adaptability to unpredictable and unstructured environments using soft materials and structures. However, the determination of key design parameters and control over these…
Most evolutionary robotics studies focus on evolving some targeted behavior without taking the energy usage into account. This limits the practical value of such systems because energy efficiency is an important property for real-world…