Co-evolution of morphology and walking pattern of biped humanoid robot using evolutionary computation - evolutionary designing method and its evaluation

In this paper, evolutionary designing method of a biped walking robot is proposed and evaluated in comparison with traditional manner. Usually, the structure and control system of robot have been designed separately. Therefore, the structure is given in advance when the control system is developed. This results in a great deal of trial-and-errors. On the other hand, evolutionary designing method carries out these operations simultaneously. Two calculations are conducted of which morphologies are changed (evolutionary designing method) and not changed (traditional manner) during the evolution. As a result, almost the same number of pareto optimal solutions are emerged. However, solutions generated with evolutionary designing method obtain higher fitnesses than the others. This means that evolutionary designing method could be powerful and efficient method for the real robot.