Abstract
One of the grand challenges in self-configurable robotics is to enable robots to change their configuration, autonomously, and in parallel, depending on changes in the environment. In this paper we investigate, in simulation, if this is possible through evolutionary algorithms (EA). To this end, we implement an unconventional on-line, on-board EA that works inside the robots, adapting their controllers to a given environment on-line. This adaptive robot swarm is then exposed to changing circumstances that require that robots aggregate into “organisms” or dis-aggregate into swarm mode again to improve their fitness. The experimental results clearly demonstrate that this EA is capable of adapting the system in real time, without human intervention.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Araujo, L., Merelo, J.: Diversity through multiculturality: Assessing migrant choice policies in an island model. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation 15(4), 456 – 469 (2011)
Bianco, R., Nolfi, S.: Toward open-ended evolutionary robotics: evolving elementary robotic units able to self-assemble and self-reproduce. Connection Science 16(4), 227–248 (2004)
Bonabeau, E., Dorigo, M., Theraulaz, G.: Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial Systems. Oxford University Press (1999)
Branke, J., Kirby, S.: Evolutionary Optimization in Dynamic Environments. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston (2001)
Bredeche, N., Montanier, J.-M.: Environment-Driven Embodied Evolution in a Population of Autonomous Agents. In: Schaefer, R., Cotta, C., Kołodziej, J., Rudolph, G. (eds.) PPSN XI. LNCS, vol. 6239, pp. 290–299. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Eiben, A.E., Haasdijk, E., Bredeche, N.: Embodied, on-line, on-board evolution for autonomous robotics. In: Levi, P., Kernbach, S. (eds.) Symbiotic Multi-Robot Organisms: Reliability, Adaptability, Evolution,, ch. 5.2, pp. 361–382. Springer (May 2010)
Groß, R., Bonani, M., Mondada, F., Dorigo, M.: Autonomous self-assembly in swarm-bots. IEEE Transactions on Robotics 22, 1115–1130 (2006)
Groß, R., Dorigo, M.: Evolution of solitary and group transport behaviors for autonomous robots capable of self-assembling. Adaptive Behavior 16(5), 285 (2008)
Haasdijk, E., Eiben, A.E., Karafotias, G.: On-line evolution of robot controllers by an encapsulated evolution strategy. In: Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation. IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. IEEE Press, Barcelona (2010)
Hettiarachchi, S.: Distributed evolution for swarm robotics. ProQuest (2007)
Huijsman, R.J., Haasdijk, E., Eiben, A.: An On-line On-board Distributed Algorithm for Evolutionary Robotics. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference, Evolution Artificielle, EA 2011. LNCS. Springer (2011)
Kernbach, S., Meister, E., Scholz, O., Humza, R., Liedke, J., Rico, L., Jemai, J., Havlik, J., Liu, W.: Evolutionary robotics: The next-generation-platform for on-line and on-board artificial evolution. In: 2009 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, pp. 1079–1086 (2009)
König, L., Mostaghim, S., Schmeck, H.: Online and onboard evolution of robotic behavior using finite state machines. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, vol. 2, pp. 1325–1326. International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (2009)
Kutzer, M.D.M., Moses, M.S., Brown, C.Y., Scheidt, D.H., Chirikjian, G.S., Armand, M.: Design of a new independently-mobile reconfigurable modular robot. In: 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 2758–2764. IEEE (2010)
Laredo, J.L.J., Eiben, A.E., Steen, M., Merelo, J.J.: EvAg: a scalable peer-to-peer evolutionary algorithm. Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines 11(2), 227–246 (2009)
Levi, P., Kernbach, S. (eds.): Symbiotic Multi-Robot Organisms, Cognitive Systems Monographs, vol. 7. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Mondada, F., Pettinaro, G.C., Guignard, A., Kwee, I.W., Floreano, D., Deneubourg, J.L., Nolfi, S., Gambardella, L.M., Dorigo, M.: Swarm-bot: A new distributed robotic concept. Autonomous Robots 17(2/3), 193–221 (2004)
Morrison, R.W.: Designing Evolutionary Algorithms for Dynamic Environments. Springer (2004)
Nelson, A.L., Barlow, G.J., Doitsidis, L.: Fitness functions in evolutionary robotics: A survey and analysis. Robotics and Autonomous Systems 57(4), 345–370 (2009)
Nolfi, S., Floreano, D.: Evolutionary Robotics: The Biology, Intelligence, and Technology of Self-Organizing Machines. MIT Press, Cambridge (2000)
O’Grady, R., Christensen, A.L., Dorigo, M.: Autonomous Reconfiguration in a Self-assembling Multi-robot System. In: Dorigo, M., Birattari, M., Blum, C., Clerc, M., Stützle, T., Winfield, A.F.T. (eds.) ANTS 2008. LNCS, vol. 5217, pp. 259–266. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Schwarzer, C., Schlachter, F., Michiels, N.: Online evolution in dynamic environments using neural networks in autonomous robots. International Journal On Advances in Intelligent Systems 4(3-4), 288–298 (2012)
Smit, S.K., Eiben, A.E.: Multi-problem parameter tuning using BONESA. In: Hao, J., Legrand, P., Collet, P., Monmarché, N., Lutton, E., Schoenauer, M. (eds.) Proceedings of Artificial Evolution, 10th International Conference, Evolution Artificielle (EA 2011), pp. 222–233 (2011)
Stoy, K., Kurokawa, H.: Current topics in classic self-reconfigurable robot research. In: Proceedings of the 2011 IROS Workshop (SW9), Reconfigurable Modular Robotics: Challenges of Mechatronic and Bio-Chemo-Hybrid Systems (2011)
Szymanski, M., Winkler, L., Laneri, D., Schlachter, F., Van Rossum, A., Schmickl, T., Thenius, R.: Symbricatorrtos: a flexible and dynamic framework for bio-inspired robot control systems and evolution. In: IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, CEC 2009, pp. 3314–3321. IEEE (2009)
Watson, R.A., Ficici, S.G., Pollack, J.B.: Embodied evolution: Distributing an evolutionary algorithm in a population of robots. Robotics and Autonomous Systems 39(1), 1–18 (2002)
Weel, B., Haasdijk, E., Eiben, A.E.: The Emergence of Multi-cellular Robot Organisms through On-Line On-Board Evolution. In: Di Chio, C., et al. (eds.) EvoApplications 2012. LNCS, vol. 7248, pp. 124–134. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)
Wei, H., Cai, Y., Li, H., Li, D., Wang, T.: Sambot: A self-assembly modular robot for swarm robot. In: 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 66–71. IEEE (2010)
Yim, M., Shen, W.M., Salemi, B., Rus, D., Moll, M., Lipson, H., Klavins, E., Chirikjian, G.S.: Modular self-reconfigurable robot systems [grand challenges of robotics]. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 14(1), 43–52 (2007)
Yim, M., Shirmohammadi, B., Sastra, J., Park, M., Dugan, M., Taylor, C.: Towards robotic self-reassembly after explosion. In: 2007 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 2767–2772. IEEE (2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Weel, B., Hoogendoorn, M., Eiben, A.E. (2012). On-Line Evolution of Controllers for Aggregating Swarm Robots in Changing Environments. In: Coello, C.A.C., Cutello, V., Deb, K., Forrest, S., Nicosia, G., Pavone, M. (eds) Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN XII. PPSN 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7492. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32964-7_25
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32964-7_25
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32963-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-32964-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)