Behavior-based speciation for evolutionary robotics

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a speciation method that allows an evolutionary process to learn several robot behaviors using a single execution. Species are created in behavioral space in order to promote the discovery of different strategies that can solve the same navigation problem. Candidate neurocontrollers are grouped into species based on their corresponding behavior signature, which represents the traversed path of the robot within the environment.Behavior signatures are encoded using character strings and are compared using the string edit distance. The proposed approach is better suited for an evolutionary robotics problem than speciating in objective or topological space. Experimental comparison with the NEAT method confirms the usefulness of the proposal.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.9 Robotics
          Subjects: Autonomous vehicles

General Terms:
Algorithms, Theory

Keywords:
evolutionary robotics, speciation