Eiben, A. E. “Evosphere: The world of robot evolution.” In International Conference on Theory and Practice of Natural Computing , pp. 3-19. Springer, Cham, 2015.
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In this paper I describe EvoSphere, a tangible realization of the general Evolution of Things concept. EvoSphere can be used as a research platform to study the evolution of intelligent machines for practical as well as theoretical purposes. On the one hand, it can be used to develop robots that are hard to obtain with traditional design and optimization techniques and it can deliver original solutions that are unlikely to be conceived by a human designer. On the other hand, EvoSphere forms an evolving ecosystem that enables fundamental research into evolution and embodied intelligence. The use of real hardware is a pivotal feature as it avoids the reality gap and guarantees that the evolved solutions are physically feasible. On the long term, EvoSphere technology can pave the way for robot populations that evolve ‘in the wild’ and can adapt to unforeseen and changing circumstances.