Robots can evolve and be autonomously creative

Using artificial intelligence to improve a design by repeatedly copying it and adding a small change each time (iterative design) is not a novel approach, but it has so far been restricted to computer simulations. By modelling a group of lifeforms that can reproduce, scientists can simulate a process that’s similar to the natural selection of real biological evolution. The individuals that are most successful are more likely to reproduce and spread their own particular design. So after a number of generations there will eventually be an optimised version of the lifeform that a human designer may not have come across on their own.

"Computer simulations of natural selection and evolution come with a series of advantages", says Iida. "Theoretically, the only limit to the number of generations and how fast they are produced is the computer’s speed. Models without promise can be easily discarded while potentially fruitful designs can be explored rapidly. And there is no need for a large supply of raw materials because computer memory is abundant, cheap, and takes up very little space".

The problem is that the simulated lifeforms may bear little resemblance to what can exist in the real world. Physical robots that can actually be built, meanwhile, are traditionally stuck in one shape for their entire lifecycle.

"To overcome these issues, my colleagues and I have built a “mother” robot that can manufacture its own 'children' without human intervention", explains Iida. "We programmed it to produce simple robots, comprised of between one and five plastic cubes with a small motor inside, which are capable of crawling. The children are then autonomously tested to see which designs perform best".

"Based on these results, the mother then produced a second generation using principles based on natural selection. It used the “virtual DNA” of the best first-generation children as a starting point for its designs in order to pass down preferential traits. The process was repeated hundreds of times and eventually the fittest individuals in the last generation performed a set locomotion task twice as quickly as the fittest individuals in the first generation".

By allowing the mother to restlessly create hundreds of new shapes and gait patterns for her children, she produced designs that a human engineer might not have been able to build. The most interesting and important thing about this is that she effectively demonstrated creativity.

Iida believes that it is not dangerous to have robots evolving by themselves: "The aim of our research is to engineer the underlying mechanisms of creativity. We wanted to know how machines can handle unknown objects, how new ideas and designs can emerge from a statistical process, and how much time, energy, raw materials and other resources are needed to create anything truly novel".