Flexible Transfer System with Physical Reconfigurability:

Coevolution between Physical Configuration and Control Strategy

Abstract

Central issues of reconfigurable robots are; 1)reconfiguration of physical structure and 2)control strategy for a robot with undecided structure. In conventional works each issue has been discussed separately, but they are essentially inseparable because the physical structure and control strategy evolve interacting with one another. So this paper discusses both of two issues in our study on a modular type of transfer system, and proposes a coevolutionary method for our transfer system. Numerical simulations illustrate the effectiveness of our method.