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Genome Variations

Effects on the Robustness of Neuroevolved Control for Swarm Robotics Systems

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Robot 2015: Second Iberian Robotics Conference

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 417))

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Abstract

Manual design of self-organized behavioral control for swarms of robots is a complex task. Neuroevolution has proved a viable alternative given its capacity to automatically synthesize controllers. In this paper, we introduce the concept of Genome Variations (GV) in the neuroevolution of behavioral control for robotic swarms. In an evolutionary setup with GV, a slight mutation is applied to the evolving neural network parameters before they are copied to the robots in a swarm. The genome variation is individual to each robot, thereby generating a slightly heterogeneous swarm. GV represents a novel approach to the evolution of robust behaviors, expected to generate more stable and robust individual controllers, and benefit swarm behaviors that can deal with small heterogeneities in the behavior of other members in the swarm. We conduct experiments using an aggregation task, and compare the evolved solutions to solutions evolved under ideal, noise-free conditions, and to solutions evolved with traditional sensor noise.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Telecomunicações, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisboa, Portugal

    Pedro Romano, Luís Nunes, Anders Lyhne Christensen, Miguel Duarte & Sancho Moura Oliveira

Authors
  1. Pedro Romano
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  2. Luís Nunes
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  3. Anders Lyhne Christensen
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  4. Miguel Duarte
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  5. Sancho Moura Oliveira
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luís Nunes .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Info Syst Dept;Campus de Azurém, University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal

    Luís Paulo Reis

  2. Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    António Paulo Moreira

  3. Instituto Superior Tecnico - Torre Norte, University of Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Pedro U. Lima

  4. Engineering Dept., E. Ada Byron, Univ of Zaragoza, Computer & Systems, Zaragoza, Spain

    Luis Montano

  5. Automatic Control and Systems Eng. Dept., University of Malaga, Superior Technical, Málaga, Spain

    Victor Muñoz-Martinez

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Romano, P., Nunes, L., Christensen, A.L., Duarte, M., Oliveira, S.M. (2016). Genome Variations. In: Reis, L., Moreira, A., Lima, P., Montano, L., Muñoz-Martinez, V. (eds) Robot 2015: Second Iberian Robotics Conference. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 417. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27146-0_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27146-0_24

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-27145-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-27146-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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