A robot that can evolve and adapt is developed by British scientists
The machine even adapts when new limbs are attached, the team told the New Scientist magazine. Living creatures took millions of years to change from amphibians into four-legged animals but the new machine can perform a similar trick in hours. Its software automatically gets bigger and more complex as its physical body develops. Dr Christopher MacLeod, an artificial intelligence engineer at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, said: "If we want to make really complex humanoid robots with ever more sensors and more complex behaviours it is critical that they are able to grow in complexity over time just like biological creatures did." He said as animals evolved the brain grew steadily - keeping pace with the development of new limbs and senses. In the same way Dr Macleod's robot's brain assigns new clusters of "neurons" to adapt to new additions to its body. His team started with a simple robot the size of a paperback book with two rotatable pegs for legs that could be turned by motors through 180 degrees. They then gave the robot's control system its primary command to travel as far as possible in 1,000 seconds. The software then set to work evolving the fastest form of locomotion to fulfil this task. Dr MacLeod said: "It fell over mostly in a puppyish kind of way. But then it started moving forward and not falling over straight away and then it got better and better until it could eventually hop along the bench like a mudskipper."
