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Title:Evolution and Development of a Central Pattern Generator for the Swimming of a Lamprey
Authors: Auke Jan Ijspeert ; Jerome Kodjabachian
Date:Jun 2004
Publication Title:Journal of Adaptive Behaviour
Publication Type:Journal Article
Abstract:
This paper describes the design of neural control architectures for locomotion using an evolutionary approach. Inspired by the central pattern generators foundin animals, we develop neural controllers which can produce the patterns of oscillations necessary for the swimming of a mechanically simulated lamprey. This works follows experiments in which swimming controllers were evolved using a simple encoding scheme [1, 2]. Here, controllers are developed using the SGOCE evolutionary algorithm [3,4] in which a genetic programming approach is used to evolve developmental programs which encode the growing of a dynamical neural network. The developmental programs determine how neurons located on a 2D substrate produce new cells through cellular division and how they form efferent of afferent interconnections. Swimming controllers are generated when the growin networks eventually create connections to th emuscles located on both sides of the rectangular substrate. These muscles are part of a 2D mechanical simulation of the body of the lamprey in interaction with water. Controllers are evolved with a fitness functin which rewards the capacity of modulating the speed and the dirction of swimming when tonic input signals are varied. The results show that efficient controllers capable of producing the neural activity necessary for swimming can be developed. The evolved controllers aare central pattern generators whcih can produce relatively complex patterns of oscillations when receiving simple tonic inputs. The best solutions generate travelling waves of neural activity, and propagate, similarly to the swimming of a real lamprey, ondulations of the body from head to tail projecting the lamprey forward through water. By simply varying the amplitude of two input signals, the speed and direction of swimming can be modulated.
Copyright:
2004 by The University of Edinburgh. All Rights Reserved
Links To Paper
No links available
Bibtex format
@Article{EDI-INF-RR-0256,
author = { Auke Jan Ijspeert and Jerome Kodjabachian },
title = {Evolution and Development of a Central Pattern Generator for the Swimming of a Lamprey},
journal = {Journal of Adaptive Behaviour},
year = 2004,
month = {Jun},
}


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