Engineers have developed a robotic system that
can evolve and improve its performance.
A robot arm builds "babies" that get
progressively better at moving without any human intervention.The ultimate aim
of the research project is to develop robots that adapt to their surroundings.The
work by teams in Cambridge and Zurich has been published in the journal PLOS
One.It seems like a plot from a science fiction film: a robot that builds other
robots - each one better than the previous generation. But that is what
researchers in Cambridge and Zurich have done.
But those concerned about machines taking over
the world shouldn't worry, at least not yet.At this stage the "baby
robots" consist of plastic cubes with a motor inside. These are put
together by a "mother" robot arm which glues them together in
different configurations.Although the set up is simple the system itself is
ingenious.
The mother robot assesses how far its babies
are able to move, and with no human intervention, improves the design so that
the next one it builds can move further.
The mother robot built ten generations of
children. The final version moved twice the distance of the first before its
power ran out.
According to Dr Fumiya Iida of Cambridge
University, who led the research with colleagues at ETH Zurich, one aim is to
gain new insights into how living things evolve.
"One of the big questions in biology is
how intelligence came about - we're using robotics to explore this
mystery," he told BBC News.
"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."
Another aim is to develop robots that can
improve and adapt to new situations, according to Andre Rosendo - who also
worked on the project.
"You can imagine cars being built in
factories and the robot looking for defects in the car and fixing them by
itself," he said.
"And robots used in agriculture could try
out slightly different ways of harvesting crops to see if they can improve
yield."
DrIidya told me that he came into robotics
because he was disappointed that the robots he saw in real life were not as
good as the ones he saw in science fiction films such as Star Wars and Star
Trek.
His aim was to change that and his approach
was to draw lessons from the natural world to improve the efficiency and
flexibility of traditional robotic systems.
As to whether we'd ever see robots like those
in the sci-fi films that inspired him, he said: "We're not there yet, but
sure, why not, maybe in about 30 years."
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