title: Evolving locomotion for a 12-DOF quadruped robot in simulated environments.
abstract: We demonstrate the power of evolutionary robotics (ER) by comparing to a more traditional approach its performance and cost on the task of simulated robot locomotion. A novel quadruped robot is introduced, the legs of which - each having three non-coplanar degrees of freedom - are very maneuverable. Using a simplistic control architecture and a physics simulation of the robot, gaits are designed both by hand and using a highly parallel evolutionary algorithm (EA). It is found that the EA produces, in a small fraction of the time that takes to design by hand, gaits that travel at two to four times the speed of the hand-designed one. The flexibility of this approach is demonstrated by applying it across a range of differently configured simulators.
authors.affiliation: University of Oslo, Department of Informatics, Ole-Johan Dahls Hus, Gaustadallen 23 B, N-0373 Oslo, Norway. gordonk@ifi.uio.no
authors.forename: Gordon
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Klaus
authors.forename: Kyrre
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Glette
authors.forename: Mats
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Høvin
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004867:Equipment Design; D005684:Gait / Q000502:physiology*; D008124:Locomotion / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012371:Robotics / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*