We introduce a method that permits to co-evolve the body and the control properties of robots. It can be used to adapt the morphological traits of robots with a hand-designed morphological bauplan or to evolve the morphological bauplan as well. Our results indicate that robots with co-adapted body and control traits outperform robots with fixed hand-designed morphologies. Interestingly, the advantage is not due to the selection of better morphologies but rather to the mutual scaffolding process that results from the possibility to co-adapt the morphological traits to the control traits and vice versa. Our results also demonstrate that morphological variations do not necessarily have destructive effects on robots’ skills.

我们介绍了一种可以使机器人的身体和控制特性共同进化的方法。它可以用于通过手工设计的形态学键盘来适应机器人的形态特征，也可以用来演化形态学键盘。我们的结果表明，具有共同适应的身体和控制特征的机器人要优于具有固定手工设计形态的机器人。有趣的是，优点不是由于选择了更好的形态，而是由于相互脚手架过程，这种过程是通过将形态性状与控制性状相互适应的可能性而产生的，反之亦然。我们的结果还表明，形态变化不一定会对机器人的技能产生破坏性影响。