A challenging task that must be accomplished for every legged robot is creating the walking and running behaviors needed for it to move.
In this talk I will present the system for autonomously evolving dynamic gaits used for two of Sony's quadruped robots.
The developed Evolutionary Algorithm runs onboard the robot and uses the robot's sensors to compute the quality of a gait without assistance from the experimenter.
First I will show the evolution of a pace and trot gait on the OPEN-R prototype robot.
With the fastest gait, the robot moves at over 10m/min., which is more than forty body-lengths/min.
While these first gaits are somewhat sensitive to the robot and environment in which they are evolved, I then show the evolution of robust dynamic gaits, one of which was used on the ERS-110, the first consumer version of AIBO.
I will conclude with a brief discussion on using simulators to evolve higher-level behaviors.
