- author = "Joshua E. Auerbach and Deniz Aydin and Andrea Maesani and Przemyslaw M. Kornatowski and Titus Cieslewski and Gregoire Heitz and Pradeep R. Fernando and Ilya Loshchilov and Ludovic Daler and Dario Floreano",
- title = "{RoboGen}: Robot Generation through Artificial Evolution",
- booktitle = "Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference of the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems, ALIFE 14",
- year = "2014",
- editor = "Hiroki Sayama and John Rieffel and Sebastian Risi and Rene Doursat and Hod Lipson",
- series = "Complex Adaptive Systems",
- pages = "136--137",
- address = "New York",
- month = "30 " # jul # "-2 " # aug,
- organisation = "International Society for Artificial Life",
- publisher = "MIT Press",
- keywords = "genetic algorithms, genetic programming, RoboGen",
- isbn13 = "9780262326216 ?",
-
URL = "
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/alife14/ch022.html",
-
DOI = "
doi:10.7551/978-0-262-32621-6-ch022",
- size = "2 pages",
-
abstract = "Science instructors from a wide range of disciplines
agree that hands-on laboratory components of courses
are pedagogically necessary (Freedman, 1997). However,
certain shortcomings of current laboratory exercises
have been pointed out by several authors (Mataric,
2004; Hofstein and Lunetta, 2004). The overarching
theme of these analyses is that hands-on components of
courses tend to be formulaic, closed-ended, and at
times outdated. To address these issues, we envision a
novel platform that is not only a didactic tool but is
also an experimental testbed for users to play with
different ideas in evolutionary robotics (Nolfi and
Floreano, 2000), neural networks, physical simulation,
3D printing, mechanical assembly, and embedded
processing.
Here, we introduce RoboGen an open-source software and hardware platform designed for the joint evolution of robot morphologies and controllers a la Sims (1994); Lipson and Pollack (2000); Bongard and Pfeifer (2003). Robo-Gen has been designed specifically to allow evolved robots to be easily manufactured via widely available desktop 3D-printers, and the use of simple, open-source, low-cost, off-the-shelf electronic components. RoboGen features an evolution engine complete with a physics simulator, as well as utilities both for generating design files of body components for 3D printing, and for compiling neural-network controllers to run on an Arduino microcontroller board.
In this paper, we describe the RoboGen platform, and provide some metrics to assess the success of using it as the hands-on component of a masters-level bio-inspired artificial intelligence course.",
- notes = "Laboratory of Intelligent Systems Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. ALIFE 14 http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/artificial-life-14 ALIFE14NYC@gmail.com",
