Evolutionary Robotics: The Biology, Intelligence, and Technology of Self-organising Machines

S. Nolfi and D. FloreanoThe MIT Press2001320 pp.ISBN 0-262-14070-5£34.50 (Hardback)

Keywords: Robotics, Neural networks, Genetic algorithms

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to evolutionary robotics, a technique for the automatic control and creation of autonomous robots. Utilising neural networks, genetic algorithms, dynamic systems and biomorphic engineering,these robots are selectively bred, with random mutations to their genetically specified control system, until the birth of a robot that satisfies the required performance criteria.

Chapter 1 discusses the role of self-organisation for the synthesis and the understanding of behavioural systems. Evolutionary and neural techniques are presented in chapter 2, and this is followed by a discussion on how to evolve robots.

Methods for the evolution of simple navigation are addressed in chapter 4,while the power and limits of reactive intelligence are considered in chapter 5. Chapter 6, beyond reactive intelligence, describes two experimental situations that can only be solved by robots allowed to exploit modular architectures and/or internal dynamic states.

Chapters 7 and 8 discuss learning and evolution, and competitive co-evolution, respectively, while encoding, mapping and development are addressed in Chapter 9. Chapter 10 presents walking machines and complex hardware morphologies. The final chapter of the book discusses evolvable hardware, including the evolution of electronic circuits and the evolution of robotic bodies. Conclusions and notes summarising the 11 chapters are also given.

Overall, Evolutionary Robotics is an informative and inspiring book that provides a thorough examination of the subject. It is suitable for researchers and postgraduate students who are interested in this subject.