Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Robots learn to share and help each other

Robots become altruistic and help each other in an laboratory evolution experiment.

Robots have officially learned how to help each other -- like animals and humans do -- in a laboratory evolution experiment.

The evolving robots measured no more than an inch in length and carted around on wheels in an environment where they foraged for "food" disks. The disks could either be brought to locations scoring them points. When all the disks were placed, the round -- or generation -- would move on to the next and only the survivors who amassed enough resources, could pass on their "genes" (code).

Creators of the experiment Dario Floreano, EPFL robotics professor, and Laurent Keller, University of Lausanne biologist, found that in each round the robots would share their food; ensuring that the pool of robot "genes" in the next generation would remain large.

That might seem like a small feat but these robots were not programmed to share food. They learned to share food on their own, as Hamilton's Rule states that organism evolve to do good for the continuation of their species over it's own need for self-preservation.

This is a great day in robotics now that they can help each other. Wait...help each other...as a species...uh, we'll get back to you.

and EPFL News via Wired Science]

Like this? You might also enjoy...

Get your GeekTech on: Twitter - Facebook - RSS | Tip us off

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Evolve, Facebook, Wikipedia
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: gadgets, robotics
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Collaborative software delivery: Managing today’s complex environment to improve software quality
    IBM Rational Team Concert software can help simplify, automate and govern the delivery process. Based on the open standards Jazz platform, it offers a lean collaborative application life cycle management (ALM) solution with integrated planning, work-item tracking, version control, build management and reporting.
    Learn more »
  • Virtualise, Manage, Backup, Consolidate
    Datacenter sprawl is one of the larger challenges that datacenter managers are facing today. Over time, applications, servers, and storage can create many unique architectures across the IT infrastructure. This can introduce complexity, increase costs, and compromise business-critical application performance and availability. Read on.
    Learn more »
  • Cloud printing in the enterprise: liberating the mobile print experience from cables, operating systems and physical boundaries
    In recent years mobile technology has proliferated throughout the enterprise. Today, virtually no one in the workforce is bound to a desk to work, check e-mail or communicate with co-workers and customers. At the same time, we’re seeing the rise of cloud technologies, loosely defined as online resources, often provided as a service, that manage the data and software that used to run solely on PCs. This merger of mobile and cloud technologies is on its way to becoming one of most significant enablers of business productivity and innovation seen in the past decade. Read more.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments