Exploring Mechanically Self-Reconfiguring Robots for Autonomous Design
This work tackles the problem of limited real-world morphological optimization in evolutionary robotics for researchers, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing concepts with a new platform.
The researchers developed a four-legged mammal-inspired robot with self-reconfiguring morphology to address the limitation of previous evolutionary robotics work that only optimized control in simulation, enabling real-world experiments on changing robot morphology.
Evolutionary robotics has aimed to optimize robot control and morphology to produce better and more robust robots. Most previous research only addresses optimization of control, and does this only in simulation. We have developed a four-legged mammal-inspired robot that features a self-reconfiguring morphology. In this paper, we discuss the possibilities opened up by being able to efficiently do experiments on a changing morphology in the real world. We discuss present challenges for such a platform and potential experimental designs that could unlock new discoveries. Finally, we place our robot in its context within general developments in the field of evolutionary robotics, and consider what advances the future might hold.