Mother Robot That Creates Its Own Offspring

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have developed a mother robot capable of creating and evaluating the performance of its offspring. According to Reuters, this robot can assess the performance of its children to improve the design of the next generation. The mother robot transfers the strengths of its offspring to the next generation while eliminating weaknesses. Andre Rosendo, one of the project engineers, states: 'We have designed a robot that can produce other robots. In fact, we have a mother robot that can create offspring by combining parts using glue. These offspring robots are utilized after production. The mother robot evaluates their performance and uses the collected data to create the next generation of robots.' The mother robot constructs a new robot using one to five plastic cubes that are connected with glue. Each cube contains a small motor. Thus, by connecting the cubes in slightly different shapes, it is sufficient for the motors to activate to witness a different mode of movement. All robots start moving from a single point, and their movement is measured over a specified time period. The design model of the most successful robots is transferred to the next generation. Dr. Fumiya Lida, the principal investigator of the project, said that 'the mother robot can actually create hundreds of offspring and evaluate their performance. If an offspring performs well, it retains that design for the next generation, and if the performance is unsatisfactory, it discards that design. By repeating these improvement processes, the mother robot can gradually enhance the performance of its offspring.' He mentioned that the mother robot has created 500 offspring so far and has determined which ones exhibited good behavior and which performed poorly. He stated that ultimately, the mother robot was able to design an offspring robot that would be very difficult for a human to create manually. The goal of this process is to build robots without human intervention. The report adds that the mother robot mimics the evolutionary system of nature to survive and continue the lineage of organisms that have adapted better to their environment, applying the same method for producing its offspring and improving their approach. Lida explains that for example, when you visit a car manufacturing plant, if you have a robotic camera that can observe and analyze the production process, it can correct mistakes made on one car on another car during production, and by repeating this process, ultimately a car will be produced in the future that has the fewest defects, allowing you to own a very attractive car.