Evolutionary co-optimisation of robot morphology and control : toward a seahorse-tail inspired robotic manipulator
- Author
- Dries Marzougui (UGent) , Dominique Adriaens (UGent) and Francis wyffels (UGent)
- Organization
- Abstract
- The design of robotic manipulators is confronted with a seemingly unavoidable trade-off between the level of flexibility versus strength. Unsurprisingly, nature has already come up with a solution and encapsulated it in a particular group of organisms: the seahorses. A seahorse’s body is completely enclosed in highly articulated body armour, made of similar and modular bony plates. Yet, the combination of regional variation in this skeletal anatomy and the soft tissue interconnecting the skeletal units provides a rigid, yet controllable and flexible tail. A seahorse tail thereby intriguingly integrates these two seemingly mutually exclusive properties. Although the seahorse can serve as a bio-inspired foundation for designing a novel type of robotic manipulator, its actual design is far from intuitive and hard to do manually. This raises the need for automated design methodologies. One domain, named Evolutionary Robotics, applies evolution as an optimisation technique to provide a holistic perspective to automated robot design. Evolutionary Robotics has already shown its potential in conventional rigid robotics and provided the necessary backbone for the optimisation of more recent alternatives such as soft robotics. Our work lies at the intersection of biology and robotics, as we aim to create a generic evolutionary brain-body co-optimisation framework. Using this framework, we pursue the automated design of a seahorse-tail-inspired robotic manipulator. From there on, the framework maintains applicability to other biomimetic experiments, next to providing a testbed for in-silico evolutionary experiments in biology.
- Keywords
- biomimicry, evolutionary algorithms, evolutionary robotics
Citation
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication: http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-01GRK506R21NW2XNBQP6EHDDAK
- MLA
- Marzougui, Dries, et al. “Evolutionary Co-Optimisation of Robot Morphology and Control : Toward a Seahorse-Tail Inspired Robotic Manipulator.” SEB Annual Conference 2022, Abstracts, 2022, doi:10.48448/avpf-1v96.
- APA
- Marzougui, D., Adriaens, D., & wyffels, F. (2022). Evolutionary co-optimisation of robot morphology and control : toward a seahorse-tail inspired robotic manipulator. SEB Annual Conference 2022, Abstracts. Presented at the Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) : Annual Conference, Montpellier, France. https://doi.org/10.48448/avpf-1v96
- Chicago author-date
- Marzougui, Dries, Dominique Adriaens, and Francis wyffels. 2022. “Evolutionary Co-Optimisation of Robot Morphology and Control : Toward a Seahorse-Tail Inspired Robotic Manipulator.” In SEB Annual Conference 2022, Abstracts. https://doi.org/10.48448/avpf-1v96.
- Chicago author-date (all authors)
- Marzougui, Dries, Dominique Adriaens, and Francis wyffels. 2022. “Evolutionary Co-Optimisation of Robot Morphology and Control : Toward a Seahorse-Tail Inspired Robotic Manipulator.” In SEB Annual Conference 2022, Abstracts. doi:10.48448/avpf-1v96.
- Vancouver
- 1.Marzougui D, Adriaens D, wyffels F. Evolutionary co-optimisation of robot morphology and control : toward a seahorse-tail inspired robotic manipulator. In: SEB Annual Conference 2022, Abstracts. 2022.
- IEEE
- [1]D. Marzougui, D. Adriaens, and F. wyffels, “Evolutionary co-optimisation of robot morphology and control : toward a seahorse-tail inspired robotic manipulator,” in SEB Annual Conference 2022, Abstracts, Montpellier, France, 2022.
@inproceedings{01GRK506R21NW2XNBQP6EHDDAK,
abstract = {{The design of robotic manipulators is confronted with a seemingly unavoidable trade-off between the level of flexibility versus strength. Unsurprisingly, nature has already come up with a solution and encapsulated it in a particular group of organisms: the seahorses. A seahorse’s body is completely enclosed in highly articulated body armour, made of similar and modular bony plates. Yet, the combination of regional variation in this skeletal anatomy and the soft tissue interconnecting the skeletal units provides a rigid, yet controllable and flexible tail. A seahorse tail thereby intriguingly integrates these two seemingly mutually exclusive properties. Although the seahorse can serve as a bio-inspired foundation for designing a novel type of robotic manipulator, its actual design is far from intuitive and hard to do manually. This raises the need for automated design methodologies. One domain, named Evolutionary Robotics, applies evolution as an optimisation technique to provide a holistic perspective to automated robot design. Evolutionary Robotics has already shown its potential in conventional rigid robotics and provided the necessary backbone for the optimisation of more recent alternatives such as soft robotics. Our work lies at the intersection of biology and robotics, as we aim to create a generic evolutionary brain-body co-optimisation framework. Using this framework, we pursue the automated design of a seahorse-tail-inspired robotic manipulator. From there on, the framework maintains applicability to other biomimetic experiments, next to providing a testbed for in-silico evolutionary experiments in biology.}},
author = {{Marzougui, Dries and Adriaens, Dominique and wyffels, Francis}},
booktitle = {{SEB Annual Conference 2022, Abstracts}},
keywords = {{biomimicry,evolutionary algorithms,evolutionary robotics}},
language = {{eng}},
location = {{Montpellier, France}},
title = {{Evolutionary co-optimisation of robot morphology and control : toward a seahorse-tail inspired robotic manipulator}},
url = {{http://doi.org/10.48448/avpf-1v96}},
year = {{2022}},
}
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