Robot Evolution

This book provides a synthesis of current, state-of-the-art scientific and technological knowledge concerning robot evolution. It explores the potential and limitations of the principle If evolution can create intelligence, artificial evolution can create artificial intelligence . It focusses on embodied artificial intelligence, where intelligence emerges from the interaction between a physical body and its environment as exemplified by robots. The long-term vision behind the book is that of robots that evolve, learn, and improve their bodies and brains on the job .

The book consists of three parts. Part I elaborates on natural evolution, its digital counterpart, evolutionary computing, and then reviews the history of Evolutionary Robotics, highlighting significant milestones. Part II discusses how evolutionary robotics can be implemented. It lays the groundwork by outlining the fundamental components of any Evolutionary Robotics system and then turns to increasingly sophisticated systems for controller evolution, the simultaneous evolution of morphology and control, and the augmentation of such systems with lifetime learning to improve evolved controllers. Part III looks toward the future, examining the prospect of the Evolution of Things, evolving physical robots in real time and real space, and highlighting emerging paradigms that are reshaping the field.

The book is an entry point and a reference work, rich in case studies, design patterns, and adaptable algorithmic recipes that researchers and advanced students can reuse and extend. It is written as a didactic guide, structured to support both self-study and teaching. To enable hands-on exploration, the book is accompanied by open-source software, supporting experimentation, prototyping, and reproducible research.

This volume serves as an accessible introduction to students in artificial intelligence, computer science, robotics, or related fields. AI experts, AI practitioners, roboticists, biologists and researchers in life science will find the book as a valuable reference work and an inspiration for their research.