research-article

Controlling tensegrity robots through evolution

Authors:

Adrian Agogino,

Vytas SunSpiral,

Kagan TumerAuthors Info & Claims

GECCO '13: Proceedings of the 15th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation

Pages 1293 - 1300

https://doi.org/10.1145/2463372.2463525

Published: 06 July 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Tensegrity structures (built from interconnected rods and cables) have the potential to offer a revolutionary new robotic design that is light-weight, energy-efficient, robust to failures, capable of unique modes of locomotion, impact tolerant, and compliant (reducing damage between the robot and its environment). Unfortunately robots built from tensegrity structures are difficult to control with traditional methods due to their oscillatory nature, nonlinear coupling between components and overall complexity. Fortunately this formidable control challenge can be overcome through the use of evolutionary algorithms. In this paper we show that evolutionary algorithms can be used to efficiently control a ball shaped tensegrity robot. Experimental results performed with a variety of evolutionary algorithms in a detailed soft-body physics simulator show that a centralized evolutionary algorithm performs 400% better than a hand-coded solution, while the multiagent evolution performs 800% better. In addition, evolution is able to discover diverse control solutions (both crawling and rolling) that are robust against structural failures and can be adapted to a wide range of energy and actuation constraints. These successful controls will form the basis for building high-performance tensegrity robots in the near future.

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Cited By

Liu SYang QLv JFang H(2024)Modeling of a Six-Bar Tensegrity Robot Using the Port-Hamiltonian Framework and Experimental ValidationIEEE Robotics and Automation Letters10.1109/LRA.2024.33818199:5(4439-4446)Online publication date: May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2024.3381819
Lu JLiu JXu ZMa Z(2024)Rolling motion of six-bar tensegrity structure based on PSOStructures10.1016/j.istruc.2024.10679865(106798)Online publication date: Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.istruc.2024.106798
Yoshimitsu YTsukamoto KIkemoto S(2022)Development of Pneumatically Driven Tensegrity Manipulator without Mechanical Springs2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)10.1109/IROS47612.2022.9982208(3145-3150)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS47612.2022.9982208
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Index Terms

Controlling tensegrity robots through evolution
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Machine learning

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cover image ACM Conferences

GECCO '13: Proceedings of the 15th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation

July 2013

1672 pages

ISBN:9781450319638

DOI:10.1145/2463372

Editor:
Christian Blum
IKERBASQUE and University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain
,
General Chair:
Enrique Alba
University of Malaga, Spain

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGEVO: ACM Special Interest Group on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation

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New York, NY, United States

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Published: 06 July 2013

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GECCO '13

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SIGEVO

GECCO '13: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference

July 6 - 10, 2013

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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GECCO '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 204 of 570 submissions, 36%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,669 of 4,410 submissions, 38%

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Cited By

Liu SYang QLv JFang H(2024)Modeling of a Six-Bar Tensegrity Robot Using the Port-Hamiltonian Framework and Experimental ValidationIEEE Robotics and Automation Letters10.1109/LRA.2024.33818199:5(4439-4446)Online publication date: May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2024.3381819
Lu JLiu JXu ZMa Z(2024)Rolling motion of six-bar tensegrity structure based on PSOStructures10.1016/j.istruc.2024.10679865(106798)Online publication date: Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.istruc.2024.106798
Yoshimitsu YTsukamoto KIkemoto S(2022)Development of Pneumatically Driven Tensegrity Manipulator without Mechanical Springs2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)10.1109/IROS47612.2022.9982208(3145-3150)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS47612.2022.9982208
Shah DBooth JBaines RWang KVespignani MBekris KKramer-Bottiglio R(2022)Tensegrity RoboticsSoft Robotics10.1089/soro.2020.01709:4(639-656)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2022
https://doi.org/10.1089/soro.2020.0170
Yates CChristopher RTumer KCoello Coello C(2020)Multi-fitness learning for behavior-driven cooperationProceedings of the 2020 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference10.1145/3377930.3390220(453-461)Online publication date: 25-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3377930.3390220
Usevitch NHammond ZSchwager M(2020)Locomotion of Linear Actuator Robots Through Kinematic Planning and Nonlinear OptimizationIEEE Transactions on Robotics10.1109/TRO.2020.299506736:5(1404-1421)Online publication date: Oct-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/TRO.2020.2995067
Doney KPetridou AKaraul JKhan ALiu GRieffel J(2020)Behavioral Repertoires for Soft Tensegrity Robots2020 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI)10.1109/SSCI47803.2020.9308218(2265-2271)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/SSCI47803.2020.9308218
Baines RBooth JKramer-Bottiglio R(2020)Rolling Soft Membrane-Driven Tensegrity RobotsIEEE Robotics and Automation Letters10.1109/LRA.2020.30151855:4(6567-6574)Online publication date: Oct-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2020.3015185
Kim KAgogino AAgogino A(2020)Rolling Locomotion of Cable-Driven Soft Spherical Tensegrity RobotsSoft Robotics10.1089/soro.2019.0056Online publication date: 7-Feb-2020
https://doi.org/10.1089/soro.2019.0056
Roffman KLesieutre G(2019)Cable-Actuated Articulated Cylindrical Tensegrity BoomsAIAA Scitech 2019 Forum10.2514/6.2019-1526Online publication date: 6-Jan-2019
https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2019-1526
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