BEACON scientists Philip McKinley, Xiaobo Tan, and Janette Boughman have been awarded an NSF grant to construct Evolution Park, an evolutionary robotics testbed!
The Evolution Park provides an experimental testbed for applying evolutionary computation to the development and control of autonomous robotic systems. In this environment, artificial creatures can evolve in silico, be fabricated into physical forms, be tested under realistic conditions, and even be deployed to assist in scientific investigations of living organisms. The overriding theme of the project is to construct a facility that supports exploration of the interaction of (natural and artificial) creatures with their surrounding environment, and the effects of that interaction on the evolutionary process.
For more information, please see the Evolution Park website.
