This paper provides an overview of evolutionary robotics techniques applied to on-line distributed evolution for robot collectives -- namely, embodied evolution. It provides a definition of embodied evolution as well as a thorough description of the underlying concepts and mechanisms. The paper also presents a comprehensive summary of research published in the field since its inception (1999-2017), providing various perspectives to identify the major trends. In particular, we identify a shift from considering embodied evolution as a parallel search method within small robot collectives (fewer than 10 robots) to embodied evolution as an on-line distributed learning method for designing collective behaviours in swarm-like collectives. The paper concludes with a discussion of applications and open questions, providing a milestone for past and an inspiration for future research.
@article{arxiv.1709.08992,
title = {Embodied Evolution in Collective Robotics: A Review},
author = {Nicolas Bredeche and Evert Haasdijk and Abraham Prieto},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.08992},
year = {2018}
}