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Advances in Nature and Biologically Inspired Computing pp 129–139Cite as

Using Standard Components in Evolutionary Robotics to Produce an Inexpensive Robot Arm

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Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 419))

Abstract

Evolutionary Robotics (ER) makes use of evolutionary algorithms to evolve controllers and morphologies of robots. Despite successful demonstrations in laboratory experiments, ER has not been widely adopted by industry as means of robot design. A possible reason for this is that current ER approaches ignore issues that are important when designing robots for practical use. For example, the availability and cost of components used for robot construction should be considered. A robot designed by the ER process may require specialised custom components to be built to support the physical functioning of the design, if the components selected by an ER process are not widely available. Alternatively, the ER designed robot may be too expensive to be constructed. This paper demonstrates that standard off-the-shelf components can be used by the ER process to design a robot. A robot arm is used as a sample problem, which is successfully optimised to use components from a fixed list while minimising cost.

The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at, are those of the authors and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nelson Mandela Meteropolitan University, University Way, Port Elizabeth, 6031, South Africa

    Michael W. Louwrens, Mathys C. du Plessis & Jean H. Greyling

Authors
  1. Michael W. Louwrens
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  2. Mathys C. du Plessis
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  3. Jean H. Greyling
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael W. Louwrens .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematics, Statistics and CS, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

    Nelishia Pillay

  2. Sch of IT, Dept of CS, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

    Andries P. Engelbrecht

  3. Sci N/w for Innova and Research Exc, Machine Intelligence Research Labs, Auburn, Washington, USA

    Ajith Abraham

  4. Department of Computing Sciences,, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

    Mathys C. du Plessis

  5. Faculty of Electrical Engineering and, Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava-Poruba, Czech Republic

    Václav Snášel

  6. Fakulti Teknologi Maklumat dan Komunikas, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Durian Tunggal, Malaysia

    Azah Kamilah Muda

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Louwrens, M.W., du Plessis, M.C., Greyling, J.H. (2016). Using Standard Components in Evolutionary Robotics to Produce an Inexpensive Robot Arm. In: Pillay, N., Engelbrecht, A., Abraham, A., du Plessis, M., Snášel, V., Muda, A. (eds) Advances in Nature and Biologically Inspired Computing. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 419. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27400-3_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27400-3_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-27399-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-27400-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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