Evolutionary Robotics

Question 1

What is competitive co-evolution? Examples?

Answer 1

It is a situation where two different species co-evolve against each other. Typical examples are

• predator-prey
• host-parasite

Question 2

Potential advantages of competitive co-evolution:

Answer 2

• It may increase adaptivity by producing an evolutionary arms race
• More complex solutions may incrementally emerge as each population tries to win over the opponent
• It may be a solution to the bootstrap problem
• Human designed fitness function plays a less important role
• Changing fitness landscape may help to avoid local minima

Question 3

What does it mean to have a Hall of Fame? What problem does it solve?

Answer 3

It means to store the best individuals and test new individuals against all best so far. It solves the problem of cycling dynamics of competitive co-evolution.

Question 4

What techniques should be used to try to encourage cooperation?

Answer 4

Homogeneous population (not heterogeneous)
Team selection (not individual)

Question 5

What anti-cooperative behaviour emerged in the light-communicating, food and poison setup robots?

Answer 5

Lying. Robots would start to “lie” and tell the others that they were near food in order to make space at feeding site