Uncontrolled Engineering : A Review of Nolfi and Floreano ’ s Evolutionary Robotics

YOU CAN TELL A FIELD IS REACHING MATURITY when its first textbook is written. One of the challenges in writing a textbook on such a leading edge and active topic as Evolutionary Robotics, is sorting through the wealth of new ideas and current research, and determining what material is sufficiently established to include, and what is still in the realm of speculation, yet to withstand proof or refutation. Invariably, some exciting new ideas are left out in the process, but Stefano Nolfi and Dario Floreano make a good job of this task. It is especially helpful that the authors are themselves pioneers in the field, and their own groundbreaking work helped shape its progress and achievements. The result is a well-written and well-balanced book, containing both theoretical principles and experimental support, as well as practical advice from over ten years of experience. This is one of these books from which you learn much more than you initially set out to – in many places it digresses to elaborate on by-topics and other fields, providing an overall well rounded account of evolutionary design of physical robotic control systems, with the two-wheeled Khepera robot as its main pedagogical platform. The entry cost for outsiders is low, and I would certainly use this book for teaching the topic in a graduate level course.