Novelty and Objective-based Neuroevolution of a Physical Robot Swarm

Forrest Stonedahl, Susa H. Stonedahl, Nelly Cheboi, Danya Tazyeen, David Devore

2017

Abstract

This paper compares the use of novelty search and objective-based evolution to discover motion controllers for an exploration task wherein mobile robots search for immobile targets inside a bounded polygonal region and stop to mark target locations. We evolved the robots' neural-network controllers in a custom 2-D simulator, selected the best performing neurocontrollers from both novelty search and objective-based search, and compared performance relative to an unevolved (baseline) controller and a simple human-designed controller. The controllers were also transferred onto physical robots, and the real-world tests provided good empirical agreement with simulation results, showing that both novelty search and objective-based search produced controllers that were comparable or superior to the human-designed controller, and that objective-based search slightly outperformed novelty search. The best controllers had surprisingly low genotypic complexity, suggesting that this task may lack the type of deceptive fitness landscape that has previously favored novelty search over objective-based search.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Stonedahl F., Stonedahl S., Cheboi N., Tazyeen D. and Devore D. (2017). Novelty and Objective-based Neuroevolution of a Physical Robot Swarm . In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 2: ICAART, ISBN 978-989-758-220-2, pages 382-389. DOI: 10.5220/0006118303820389

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icaart17,
author={Forrest Stonedahl and Susa H. Stonedahl and Nelly Cheboi and Danya Tazyeen and David Devore},
title={Novelty and Objective-based Neuroevolution of a Physical Robot Swarm},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 2: ICAART,},
year={2017},
pages={382-389},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006118303820389},
isbn={978-989-758-220-2},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 2: ICAART,
TI - Novelty and Objective-based Neuroevolution of a Physical Robot Swarm
SN - 978-989-758-220-2
AU - Stonedahl F.
AU - Stonedahl S.
AU - Cheboi N.
AU - Tazyeen D.
AU - Devore D.
PY - 2017
SP - 382
EP - 389
DO - 10.5220/0006118303820389