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Distributed evolution of behaviour for a group of social autonomous agents

A report submitted to the department of Physical resource theory in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science and Engineering.

Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Fredrik Samuelsson
d4sama@dtek.chalmers.se
www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d4sama

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Abstract

This master thesis describes the construction of a platform for evolution of behavior in a group of small mobile robots, as well as analysis of experiments performed.

In nature many tasks are performed by cooperation and communication between individuals. In an effort to mimic nature, experiments to analyse how behaviour evolve in a group of small social mobile robots have been made.

In the experiments concluded, the difference between a single robot's ability to learn and a group of communicating robots ability to learn has been compared. The emphasis has not been on trying to control the robot as well as possible, but rather to examine how behaviour evolve.

Real physical robots built with Lego Mindstorms have been used for the experiments. Robots migrate genetic individuals between each other using infrared communication. Robots can learn from each others' success or failure by migration of fit individuals. The individuals control the robot with linear genetic programs.

Sammanfattning

Svensk titel: ``Distribuerad beteende-evolution i en grupp med mobila robotar''

Det här dokumentet är den skriftliga delen av ett examensarbete vid instutitionen för Fysisk resursteori på Chalmers. Examinator och handledare har varit Peter Nordin.

Rapporten beskriver konstruktionen av en plattform för genetisk programmering på mobila robotar, samt analys av evolutionsexperiment utförda på densamma.

Experimenten har syftat till att jämföra evolution på en ensam robot och på en grupp av robotar.

I experimenten har fysiska robotar använts. Lego Mindstorms har använts som hårdvaruplatform.

Acknowledgement

I wish to thank my supervisor Peter Nordin at the department of Physical Resource theory, for his support and consultation.

This project was possible thanks to a lot of people making usable software such as LegOS for the Mindstorms robot and tools for the development of software and documentation. I hope that some of you will find my work interesting in return.