It's a concept that Josh Bongard now applies to robots. Most robotics engineers aim at creating a robot capable of walking and then teaching it to do so. Bongard is creating robots without the capacity for walking and teaching them to crawl first, demonstrating how morphological change can help design better robots. The results of his study were replica Jaeger LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin watch published in the January 10 edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.The test this concept, Bongard created a sophisticated computer simulation in which generations of robots ran a genetic algorithm that saw them testing out various methods of locomotion in order to reach a light placed at the other end of a virtual plain. The key is for the robots to reach the light without tipping over.
He found that robots that started off as snake-like creatures unable to stand upright and evolved in stages into robots capable of moving on all four legs learned to move much faster than those with full capabilities from the start.”The snake and reptilian robots are, in essence, training wheels,” says Bongard, “they allow evolution to find motion patterns quicker, because those kinds of robots can't fall over. So evolution only has to solve the replica Jaeger LeCoultre Master Geographic watch movement problem, but not the balance problem, initially. Then gradually over time it's able to tackle the balance problem after already solving the movement problem.”Once the computer simulation was finished, Bongard put his findings to the test in the real world.
“We built a relatively robot, out of a couple of Lego Mindstorm kits, to demonstrate that you actually could do it,” he says. This physical robot is four-legged, like in the simulation, but the Lego creature wears a brace on its front and back legs. “The brace gradually tilts the robot,” as the controller searches for successful movement patterns, replica Jaeger LeCoultre Reverso Date watch Bongard says, “so that the legs go from horizontal to vertical, from reptile to quadruped.”While the brace is bending the legs, the controller is causing the robot to move around, so it's able to move its legs, and bend its spine,” he says, “it's squirming around like a reptile flat on the ground and then it gradually stands up until, at the end of this movement pattern, it's walking like a coyote.”
