Robots Evolving

Engineers have developed a robotic system that can evolve and improve its performance.

16:02 13 August 2015

Engineers from Cambridge and Zurich have developed a new robotic system which goal is to make robots adapt to their surroundings. In the study they published in the journal PLOS One, it shows that the engineers built a robot that builds other robot, with each one better than the previous generation. “Baby robots” are made from plastic cubes with a motor inside.

 

Dr Fumiya Iida of Cambridge University, who led the research with colleagues at ETH University in Zurich, said: "One of the big questions in biology is how intelligence came about - we're using robotics to explore this mystery.”

 

"We think of robots as performing repetitive tasks, and they're typically designed for mass production instead of mass customisation, but we want to see robots that are capable of innovation and creativity."

 

Meanwhile, Andre Rosendo, another engineer working on the project: said: "You can imagine cars being built in factories and the robot looking for defects in the car and fixing them by itself.”

 

"And robots used in agriculture could try out slightly different ways of harvesting crops to see if they can improve yield."