Evolution in materio: a real-time robot controller in liquid crystal

Abstract

Although intrinsic evolution has been shown to be capable of exploiting the physical properties of materials to solve problems, most researchers have chosen to limit themselves to using standard electronic components. However, it has been previously argued that because such components are human designed and intentionally have predictable responses, they may not be the most suitable medium to use when trying to get a naturally inspired search technique to solve a problem. Indeed allowing computer controlled evolution (CCE) to manipulate novel physical media can allow much greater scope for the discovery of unconventional solutions. Last year the authors demonstrated, for the first time, that CCE could manipulate liquid crystal to perform signal processing tasks (i.e frequency discrimination). In this paper we show that CCE can use liquid crystal to solve the much harder problem of controlling a robot in real time to navigate in an environment to reach an obstructed destination point.