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An evolutionary approach for robust adaptation of robot behavior to sensor error

Published: 06 July 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Evolutionary algorithms can adapt the behavior of individual agents to maximize the fitness of populations of agents. We use a genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize behavior in a team of simulated robots that mimic foraging ants. We introduce positional and resource detection error models into this simulation, emulating the sensor error characterized by our physical iAnt robot platform. Increased positional error and detection error both decrease resource collection rates. However, they have different effects on GA behavior. Positional error causes the GA to reduce time spent searching for local resources and to reduce the likelihood of returning to locations where resources were previously found. Detection error causes the GA to select for more thorough local searching and a higher likelihood of communicating the location of found resources to other agents via pheromones. Agents that live in a world with error and use parameters evolved specifically for those worlds perform significantly better than agents in the same error-prone world using parameters evolved for an error-free world. This work demonstrates the utility of employing evolutionary methods to adapt robot behaviors that are robust to sensor errors.

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Cited By

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  • (2023)Emergent communication enhances foraging behavior in evolved swarms controlled by spiking neural networksSwarm Intelligence10.1007/s11721-023-00231-618:1(1-29)Online publication date: 14-Dec-2023
  • (2021)Investigating Genetic Network Programming for Multiple Nest Foraging2021 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI)10.1109/SSCI50451.2021.9659926(1-7)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2021
  • (2021)Reinforcement learning as a rehearsal for swarm foragingSwarm Intelligence10.1007/s11721-021-00203-8Online publication date: 29-Sep-2021
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cover image ACM Conferences
GECCO '13 Companion: Proceedings of the 15th annual conference companion on Genetic and evolutionary computation
July 2013
1798 pages
ISBN:9781450319645
DOI:10.1145/2464576
  • Editor:
  • Christian Blum,
  • General Chair:
  • Enrique Alba
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 06 July 2013

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Author Tags

  1. biologically-inspired systems
  2. distributed robotics
  3. evolutionary algorithms
  4. multi-agent systems

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GECCO '13
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GECCO '13: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference
July 6 - 10, 2013
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Emergent communication enhances foraging behavior in evolved swarms controlled by spiking neural networksSwarm Intelligence10.1007/s11721-023-00231-618:1(1-29)Online publication date: 14-Dec-2023
  • (2021)Investigating Genetic Network Programming for Multiple Nest Foraging2021 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI)10.1109/SSCI50451.2021.9659926(1-7)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2021
  • (2021)Reinforcement learning as a rehearsal for swarm foragingSwarm Intelligence10.1007/s11721-021-00203-8Online publication date: 29-Sep-2021
  • (2016)The MPFA: A multiple-place foraging algorithm for biologically-inspired robot swarms2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)10.1109/IROS.2016.7759561(3815-3821)Online publication date: Oct-2016
  • (2015)Exploiting clusters for complete resource collection in biologically-inspired robot swarms2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)10.1109/IROS.2015.7353409(434-440)Online publication date: Sep-2015

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