Pollack J B, Lipson H, Hornby G, Funes P
DEMO Laboratory Computer Science Dept., Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02454, USA.
Artif Life. 2001 Summer;7(3):215-23. doi: 10.1162/106454601753238627.
The difficulties associated with designing, building, and controlling robots have led their development to a stasis: Applications are limited mostly to repetitive tasks with predefined behavior. Over the last few years we have been trying to address this challenge through an alternative approach: Rather than trying to control an existing machine or create a general-purpose robot, we propose that both the morphology and the controller should evolve at the same time. This process can lead to the automatic design of special-purpose mechanisms and controllers for specific short-term objectives. Here we provide a brief review of three generations of our recent research, which underlies the robots shown on the cover of this issue: Automatically designed static structures, automatically designed and manufactured dynamic electromechanical systems, and modular robots automatically designed through a generative DNA-like encoding.
设计、建造和控制机器人所面临的困难导致其发展陷入停滞：应用大多局限于具有预定义行为的重复性任务。在过去几年里，我们一直在尝试通过一种替代方法来应对这一挑战：我们提议，形态和控制器应同时进化，而不是试图控制现有的机器或创建通用机器人。这一过程能够带来针对特定短期目标的专用机制和控制器的自动设计。在此，我们简要回顾一下我们近期研究的三代成果，它们构成了本期封面所示机器人的基础：自动设计的静态结构、自动设计和制造的动态机电系统，以及通过类似DNA生成编码自动设计的模块化机器人。
