Skip to main content

Evolving Locomotion for a Simulated 12-DOF Quadruped Robot

  • Conference paper
Information Processign in Cells and Tissues (IPCAT 2012)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 7223))

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 presented, 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 nearly twice the speed of the hand-designed one.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Doncieux, S., Bredeche, N., Mouret, J.-B.: Exploring new horizons in evolutionary design of robots. In: Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). IEEE Press (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Harvey, I., Husbands, P., Cliff, D., Thompson, A., Jakobi, N.: Evolutionary robotics: the sussex approach. Robotics and Autonomous Systems 20, 205–224 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Rieffel, J., Trimmer, B., Lipson, H.: Mechanism as mind: What tensegrities and caterpillars can teach us about soft robotics. In: Artificial Life XI: Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Glette, K., Hovin, M.: Evolution of Artificial Muscle-Based Robotic Locomotion in PhysX. In: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Rieffel, J., Saunders, F., Nadimpalli, S., Zhou, H., Hassoun, S., Rife, J., Trimmer, B.: Evolving soft robotic locomotion in PhysX. In: GECCO 2009: Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference Companion on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, pp. 2499–2504. ACM, New York (2009)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Bongard, J.C.: Incremental Approaches to the Combined Evolution of a Robot’s Body and Brain. PhD thesis, University of Zurich (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Macinnes, I., Di Paolo, E.: Crawling out of the simulation: Evolving real robot morphologies using cheap reusable modules. In: Pollack, J., Bedau, M., Husbands, P., Ikegami, T., Watson, R. (eds.) Artificial Life IX: Proceedings of the Ninth Interational Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Life, pp. 94–99. MIT Press, Cambridge (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Jakobi, N., Husbands, P., Harvey, I.: Noise and the Reality Gap: The Use of Simulation in Evolutionary Robotics. In: Morán, F., Merelo, J.J., Moreno, A., Chacon, P. (eds.) ECAL 1995. LNCS, vol. 929, pp. 704–720. Springer, Heidelberg (1995)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Koos, S., Mouret, J.-B., Doncieux, S.: Crossing the reality gap in evolutionary robotics by promoting transferable controllers. In: Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, GECCO 2010, pp. 119–126. ACM (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Bongard, J.C., Zykov, V., Lipson, H.: Resilient Machines Through Continuous Self-Modeling. Science 314(5802), 1118–1121 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. NVIDIA, PhysX SDK, http://developer.nvidia.com/object/physx.html

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Klaus, G., Glette, K., Høvin, M. (2012). Evolving Locomotion for a Simulated 12-DOF Quadruped Robot. In: Lones, M.A., Smith, S.L., Teichmann, S., Naef, F., Walker, J.A., Trefzer, M.A. (eds) Information Processign in Cells and Tissues. IPCAT 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7223. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28792-3_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28792-3_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-28791-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-28792-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics