Evolving and breeding robots: Breedbot and swarmbots

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Evolving and breeding robotsBreedbot and
swarm-bots
INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP VIKTORIA INSTITUTE,
GOTEBORG, SWEDEN JANUARY 13-14, 2005 DESIGNING
ROBOT APPLICATION FOR EVERYDAY USE

• Onofrio Gigliotta¹ ³
• Stefano Nolfi¹, Gianluca Baldassarre¹ Orazio
  Miglino²
• ¹CNR-ISTC
• ²II University of Naples
• ³University of Palermo

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Cheap Robotics
Robotic toys
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• Programmable robots
• require programming skills
• behaviour depends on the user
• Non programmable robots
• Pre coded behaviours
• always the same behaviours

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Programming is boring and difficult for many
people
We propose a tool for breeding robots in order to
require no programming skill breeding vs
programming
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Breedbot
Simulated environment for breeding robots
Robots are built using lego robotics invention
system
3 IR Sensors 2 DC Motors
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Control system
Weights are coded in an artificial genome
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Breedbot arena
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Interactive Evolutionary Robotics
Approach by which children can develop (or
evolve) robot controllers in the simulator by
choosing three robots among the population to
reproduce in the next generation.
Lund Miglino
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Download
When children are satisfied with the simulated
robots behavior they can easily download robots
controller into the real robot
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Conclusion
Breedbot was presented in 2004 at the Naples
Science Center where many children used and
enjoyed it. We belive it represents a starting
point for more complex behaviors and more complex
robots (e.g. legged robots)
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Future work
Breedbot on mobile phones
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Swarm-bots Coordinating Through Physical
Interactions
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Swarm-bots Generalize their Ability to Coordinate
in New Circumstances
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Team of Robots Coordinating Through Virtual
Traction
Each robot communicate to the other robots
(through radio signals) its velocity vector with
respect to a fixed reference point and each robot
sum up all received velocity vectors so to
compute the perceived virtual traction
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Possible Applications in Evacuation Scenarios