A system for automating robot design inspired by the evolution of vertebrates

Researchers at Kyoto University and Nagoya University in Japan have recently devised a new, automatic approach for designing robots that could simultaneously improve their shape, structure, movements, and controller components. This approach, presented in a paper published in Artificial Life and Robotics, draws inspiration from the evolution of vertebrates, the broad category of animals that possess a backbone or spinal column, which includes mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fishes. "The automatic robot design is a completely novel research project for the Matsuno Lab, the laboratory led by Fumitoshi Matsuno, and this is the first paper published for this project," Ryosuke Koike, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. "Its primary objective was to design a good-performing robot for a given task. Since there are innumerable possible combinations of robot morphologies and controllers, it is impossible to reach the best robot by manual human exploration. Therefore, we realized that it is necessary to establish a method for automatically designing robots using computers."