As breeding robots – BBC

For those who fear that robots and artificial intelligence take over the world, has a new cause for concern: European engineers created the first robot capable of creating other robots.

The robot created by European scientists, he glues the new generation of robots, evaluates them creep and learns from mistakes, creating a more advanced generation.

And a new generation of robots becoming completely without human intervention.

The main purpose of the study, conducted by researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Zurich, was to create a robot that adapts to the environment.

The parent robot arm builds small “robot-children” and looks at how they move on the surface. Assessing how quickly or slowly the children move, the robot parent to change the design of future generations, taking into account previous experience.

Without any human intervention, or the hand of the creator of computer simulations using a conventional adhesive making new robots, which consist of several specialized units – from one to five, which are hidden inside small motors.

In each of the five separate experiments hand to create and test a new generation of ten robots, using data obtained from the previous generation. The results, published in the journal PLoS ONE , have shown that the beneficial properties of the robots experienced several generations, and therefore the most capable of the last generation able to perform tasks twice as fast as the best of the first generation.

«natural selection – is, in fact, breeding, evaluation, breeding, evaluation and etc. In general, this is what the this robot – we can observe the improvement and diversity of species, “- says Dr. Fumiya Lida, author of the study from Cambridge.

Each new generation of individuals has a unique “gene”, which is a combination of five genes, each of which carries information about form and command that runs the motor. As in nature, the evolution of robots is due to the “mutation” when the component parts of one gene modified and individual genes are added or disappear, and the “crossing”, where the new gene is formed by fusion of two genes robots.

In order to determine the best among the children, the mother robot evaluates the path traveled by them for a certain period of time.

Top robots within each generation pass unchanged in the new generation, while maintaining their ability, and mutation and crossover at birth undergo less successful individuals.

An analysis of the latest generation has shown that their success was due not only to improve the design of robots, but also because the mother robot was able to create new forms and methods of motion that a human designer could not have come up.

«One of the most important questions of biology, where did the mind, we were able to explore with the help of robots . We are accustomed to thinking of how robots perform repetitive tasks, and usually they are designed for mass production, and not for mass customization. But we want to see robots capable of innovation and creativity “, – said Lida.

In nature, organisms can adjust their physical characteristics of the environment. This adaptation allows organisms to survive in a wide range of environmental conditions, including water and move on a hard surface.

Robots capable of evolution – increasingly popular area of ​​technology, which in the future can be created autonomous robots without human intervention.

Usually the study of evolution in robots is carried out using computer simulations, which allows to calculate the thousands and even millions of combinations. Experience has shown that the robot is able to improve their own properties, it generates a more successful offspring. The main problem here – the time since the parent robot is required to create a descendant of the order of 10 minutes.