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Beyond Body Shape and Brain: Evolving the Sensory Apparatus of Voxel-Based Soft Robots

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Applications of Evolutionary Computation (EvoApplications 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 12694))

Abstract

Biological and artificial embodied agents behave by acquiring information through sensors, processing that information, and acting on the environment. The sensory apparatus, i.e., the location on the body of the sensors and the kind of information the sensors are able to capture, has a great impact on the agent ability of exhibiting complex behaviors. While in nature, the sensory apparatus is the result of a long-lasting evolution, in artificial agents (robots) it is usually the result of a design choice. However, when the agents are complex and the design space is large, making that choice can be hard. In this paper, we explore the possibility of evolving the sensory apparatus of voxel-based soft robots (VSRs), a kind of simulated robots composed of multiple deformable components. VSRs, due to their intrinsic modularity, allow for great freedom in how to shape the robot body, brain, and sensory apparatus. We consider a set of sensors that allow the agent to sense itself and the environment (using vision and touch) and we show, experimentally, that the effectiveness of the sensory apparatus depends on the shape of the body and on the actuation capability, i.e., the VSR strength. Then we show that evolutionary optimizaemedvet@units.ittion is able to evolve an effective sensory apparatus, even when constraints on the availability of the sensors are posed. By extending the adaptation to the sensory apparatus, beyond the body shape and the brain, we believe that our study takes a step forward to the ambitious path towards self-building robots.

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Acknowledgments and Author Contributions

We thank Luca Zanella for the CMA-ES and Lidar sensor implementation. We gratefully acknowledge HPC-Cineca for making computing resources available. A. F.: Investigation; Software; Data curation; Visualization; Writing - original draft. G. I.: Conceptualization; Methodology; Writing - review & editing. E. M.: Conceptualization; Methodology; Software; Visualization; Writing - review & editing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Andrea Ferigo & Giovanni Iacca

  2. Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

    Eric Medvet

Authors
  1. Andrea Ferigo
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  2. Giovanni Iacca
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  3. Eric Medvet
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eric Medvet .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. ETSIIT-CITIC, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Pedro A. Castillo

  2. Université Le Havre Normandie, Le Havre, France

    Juan Luis Jiménez Laredo

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Ferigo, A., Iacca, G., Medvet, E. (2021). Beyond Body Shape and Brain: Evolving the Sensory Apparatus of Voxel-Based Soft Robots. In: Castillo, P.A., Jiménez Laredo, J.L. (eds) Applications of Evolutionary Computation. EvoApplications 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12694. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72699-7_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72699-7_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-72698-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-72699-7

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