Steffen Wischmann, Kristin Stamm, and Florentin Wörgötter (in press)
Embodied evolution and learning: The neglected timing of maturation
In: Advances in Artificial Life: 9th European Conference on Artificial Life. Springer-Verlag. (export entry)
One advantage of the asynchronous and distributed character of embodied
evolution is that it can be executed on real robots without external
supervision. Further, evolutionary progress can be measured in real time instead
of in generation based evaluation cycles. By combining embodied evolution with
lifetime learning, we investigated a largely neglected aspect with respect to
the common assumption that learning can guide evolution, the influence of
maturation time during which an individual can develop its behavioral skills.
Even though we found only minor differences between the evolution with and
without learning, our results, derived from competitive evolution in
predator-prey systems, demonstrate that the right timing of maturation is
crucial for the progress of evolutionary success. Our findings imply that the
time of maturation has to be considered more seriously as an important factor to
build up empirical evidence for the hypothesis that learning facilitates
evolution.