Automated Mechanism Design: Introducing Reduced Operator-Space Evolution

Previous research has shown automated robotic mechanism design to be both deceptive (prone to local minima) and rife with linkage problems (having highly interdependent parameters). This results in a barrier to optimization that is unable to be breached by simply applying more iterations and computational power. The research also indicates that...

An intelligent leader-follower neural controller in adverse observability scenarios

A high-level neural controller for leader-follower flight is presented. State of the art range-based relative localization schemes that rely exclusively on onboard sensors present an additional challenge to the leader-follower control problem since they restrict the flight conditions that guarantee observability. This novel controller was...

Adaptive Control for Evolutionary Robotics: And its effect on learning directed locomotion

This thesis is motivated by evolutionary robot systems where robot bodies and brains evolve simultaneously. In such a robot system, `birth' must be followed by `infant learning' by a learning method that works for various morphologies evolution may produce. Here we address the task of directed locomotion in modular robots with controllers based...

Evolution of robust high speed optical-flow-based landing for autonomous MAVs

Automatic optimization of robotic behavior has been the long-standing goal of Evolutionary Robotics. Allowing the problem at hand to be solved by automation often leads to novel approaches and new insights. A common problem encountered with this approach is that when this optimization occurs in a simulated environment, the optimized policies are...

Automatic modular design of robot swarms using behavior trees as a control architecture

We investigate the possibilities, challenges, and limitations that arise from the use of behavior trees in the context of the automatic modular design of collective behaviors in swarm robotics. To do so, we introduce Maple, an automatic design method that combines predefined modules—low-level behaviors and conditions— into a behavior tree that...

Abstraction as a Tool to Bridge the Reality Gap in Evolutionary Robotics

Automatically optimizing robotic behavior to solve complex tasks has been one of<br/>the main, long-standing goals of Evolutionary Robotics (ER). When successful, this<br/>approach will likely fundamentally change the rate of development and deployment<br/>of robots in everyday life. Performing this optimization on real robots can be risky<br/...

Abstraction, Sensory-Motor Coordination, and the Reality Gap in Evolutionary Robotics

One of the major challenges of evolutionary robotics is to transfer robot controllers evolved in simulation to robots in the real world. In this article, we investigate abstraction of the sensory inputs and motor actions as a tool to tackle this problem. Abstraction in robots is simply the use of preprocessed sensory inputs and low-level closed...

Abstraction as a Mechanism to Cross the Reality Gap in Evolutionary Robotics

One of the major challenges of Evolutionary Robotics is to transfer robot controllers evolved in simulation to robots in the real world. In this article, we investigate abstraction on the sensory inputs and motor actions as a potential solution to this problem. Abstraction means that the robot uses preprocessed sensory inputs and closed loop low...

Behavior Trees for Evolutionary Robotics

Evolutionary Robotics allows robots with limited sensors and processing to tackle complex tasks by means of sensory-motor coordination. In this article we show the first application of the Behavior Tree framework on a real robotic platform using the evolutionary robotics methodology. This framework is used to improve the intelligibility of the...

Behaviour Trees for Evolutionary Robotics: Reducing the Reality Gap

Evolutionary Robotics allows robots with limited sensors and processing to tackle complex tasks by means of sensory-motor coordination. In this paper we show the first application of the Behaviour Tree framework to a real robotic platform using the Evolutionary Robotics methodology. This framework is used to improve the intelligibility of the...