Further explorations in evolutionary humanoid robotics

The field of evolutionary humanoid robotics is a branch of evolutionary robotics specifically dealing with the application of evolutionary principles to humanoid robot design. Previous studies demonstrated the possible future potential of this approach by evolving walking behaviors for simulated humanoid robots with up to 20 degrees of freedom. In this paper we examine further the evolutionary process by looking at the changes in diversity over time. We then investigate the effect of the immobilization of an individual joint or joints in the robot. The latter study may be of potential future use in prosthetic design. We also explore the possibility of the evolution of humanoid robots which can cope with different environmental conditions. These include reduced ground friction (ice) and modified gravitation (moon walking). We present initial results on the implementation of our simulated humanoid robots in hardware using the Bioloid robotic platform, using a model of this robot in order to evolve the desired motion patterns, for subsequent transfer to the real robot. We finish the article with a summary and brief discussion of future work. This work was presented in part at the 12th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 25–27, 2007