Open AccessThe Influence of Robot Traits and Evolutionary Dynamics on the Reality Gap
Author(s) -
Fuda van Diggelen,
Eliseo Ferrante,
Nihed Harrak,
Jie Luo,
Daan Zeeuwe,
A. E. Eiben
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
ieee transactions on cognitive and developmental systems
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.714
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 2379-8939
pISSN - 2379-8920
DOI - 10.1109/tcds.2021.3112236
Subject(s) - computing and processing , signal processing and analysis
The elephant in the room for evolutionary robotics is the reality gap. In the history of the field, several studies investigated this phenomenon on fixed robot morphologies where only the controllers evolved. This article addresses the reality gap in a wider context, in a system where both morphologies and controllers evolve. In this context, the morphology of the robots becomes a variable with a currently unknown influence. To examine this influence, we construct a test suite of robots with various morphologies and evolve their controllers for an effective gait. Comparing the simulated and the real-world performance of evolved controllers sampled at different generations during the evolutionary process, we gain new insights into the factors that influence the reality gap.