Information Trade-Offs and the Evolution of Sensory Layouts

Abstract

In nature, sensors evolve to capture relevant information needed for organisms of a particular species to survive and reproduce. In this paper we study how sensor layouts may evolve in different environments and under pressure of dif- ferent informational constraints. To do this we evolve sen- sor layouts for different environments and constraints using a fitness measure with weighted terms for redundancy and novelty, using, respectively, mutual information and Crutch- field’s information metric. The results show how different sensor layouts evolve depending on the structure and com- plexity ofthe environment but also how selective pressure for redundancy or novelty might affect the design.