Evolutionary Robotics: new book and software available

[Stefano Nolfi]

(Our apologies for multiple copies of this message)

                         EVOLUTIONARY ROBOTICS
   THE BIOLOGY, INTELLIGENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY OF SELF-ORGANIZING MACHINES

                   Stefano Nolfi and Dario Floreano

                      MIT Press/ Bradford Books

Evolutionary robotics is a new technique for the automatic creation of
autonomous robots. Inspired by the Darwinian principle of selective
reproduction of the fittest, it views robots as autonomous artificial
organisms that develop their own skills in close interaction with the
environment and without human intervention. Drawing heavily on biology and
ethology, it uses the tools of neural networks, genetic algorithms, dynamic
systems, and biomorphic engineering. The resulting robots share with simple
biological systems the characteristics of robustness, simplicity, small
size, flexibility, and modularity. 

In evolutionary robotics, an initial population of artificial chromosomes,
each encoding the control system of a robot, is randomly created and put
into the environment. Each robot is then free to act (move, look around,
manipulate) according to its genetically specified controller while its
performance on various tasks is automatically evaluated. The fittest robots
then "reproduce" by swapping parts of their genetic material with small
random mutations. The process is repeated until the "birth" of a robot that
satisfies the performance criteria.

This book describes the basic concepts and methodologies of evolutionary
robotics and the results achieved so far. An important feature is the clear
presentation of a set of empirical experiments of increasing complexity.
Software with a graphic interface, freely available on a Web page
(http://gral.ip.rm.cnr.it/evorobot/simulator.html), allows the reader to
replicate and vary (in simulation and on real robots) most of the experiments.

Stefano Nolfi is Coordinator of the Division of Neural Systems and
Artificial Life, Institute of Psychology, National Research Council, Rome.
Dario Floreano is Assistant Professor of Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems
at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).

                                 CONTENTS

    1. The Role of Self-organization for the Synthesis and the Understanding 
       of Behavioral Systems

    2. Evolutionary and Neural Techniques

    3. How to Evolve Robots

    4. Evolution of Simple Navigation

    5. Power and Limits of Reactive Intelligence

    6. Beyond Reactive Intelligence

    7. Learning and Evolution

    8. Competitive Co-Evolution

    9. Encoding, Mapping, and Development

   10. Complex Hardware Morphologies: Walking Machines

   11. Evolvable Hardware


Intelligent Robots and Autonomous Agents series edited by Ronald C. Arkin,
MIT Press.
November 2000
ISBN 0-262-14070-5
384 pp., 157 illus.
 
The book is distributed by MIT Press: 
http://mitpress.mit.edu/book-home.tcl?isbn=0262140705

It is also available trough amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262140705/qid%253D967489468/sr%253D1
-2/105-3677959-5763124

To download the Evorobot software visit: 
http://gral.ip.rm.cnr.it/evorobot/simulator.html

For more information about Evolutionary Robotics visit: 
http://gral.ip.rm.cnr.it/evorobot/


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Stefano Nolfi
Institute of Psychology, C.N.R.
Viale Marx, 15 - 00137 - Rome - Italy
voice:  0039-06-86090231
fax:    0039-06-824737
e-mail: nolfi at ip.rm.cnr.it
www:	http://gral.ip.rm.cnr.it/nolfi