Emerged coupling of motor control and morphological development in evolution of multi-cellular animats

Abstract

A model for co-evolving behavior control and morphological development is presented in this paper. The development of the morphology starts with a single cell that is able to divide or die, which is controlled by a gene regulatory network. The cells are connected by springs and form the morphology of the grown individuals. The movements of animats are resulted from the shrinking and relaxation of the springs connecting the lateral cells on the body morphology. The gene regulatory network, together with the frequency and phase shifts of the spring movements are evolved to maximize the distance that the animats can swim in a given time interval. To facilitate the evolution of swimming animats, a term that awards an elongated morphology is also included in the fitness function. We show that animats with different body-plans emerge in the evolutionary runs and that the evolved movement control strategy is coupled with the body plan. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.