Ecosystem Manager

Ecosystem Manager

The Ecosystem Manager is a program to control the hybrid physical-virtual system, providing the link between the two. This integration is made possible by using the same genetic representation in both worlds, enabling cross-breeding so, a new robot in either environment could have physical or virtual parents or a combination of both.
An individual can also be copied between environments simply by transferring its genotype from one environment to the other. This integration must be controlled by the Ecosystem Manager, which optimises the working of the hybrid evolutionary system, maximising task performance. It reacts to flows of information from both subsystems, and to human-specified goals, either hand-directed or running autonomously.

Robot Fabricator

Robot Fabricator

The Robot Fabricator is a system to automate the building process: the conversion of genotypes into physical robot phenotypes.
The final objective is to remove human intervention from this process as far as possible, creating a manufacturing system for the autonomous production of complete robots, which will allow the evaluation of physical individuals to form part of the evolutionary process. A video can be found at this link.

Evolution

Evolution

The objective of Evolution is to design the morphologies and controllers for robots that can be translated into phenotypes to be manufactured with the Robot Fabricator.

Training Facility

Training Facility

The Training Facility provides a suitable environment for individuals to learn during infancy, providing feedback, perhaps via a computer vision system and/or a human user, so individual robots can learn to control their (possibly unique) body to perform some simple tasks.