Morphological change in machines accelerates the evolution of robust behavior

Most animals exhibit significant neurological and morphological change throughout their lifetime. No robots to date, however, grow new morphological structure while behaving. This is due to technological limitations but also because it is unclear that morphological change provides a benefit to the acquisition of robust behavior in machines. Here I show that in evolving populations of simulated robots, if robots grow from anguilliform into legged robots during their lifetime in the early stages of evolution, and the anguilliform body plan is gradually lost during later stages of evolution, gaits are evolved for the final, legged form of the robot more rapidly—and the evolved gaits are more robust—compared to evolving populations of legged robots that do not transition through the anguilliform body plan. This suggests that morphological change, as well as the evolution of development, are two important processes that improve the automatic generation of robust behaviors for machines. It also provides an experimental platform for investigating the relationship between the evolution of development and robust behavior in biological organisms.