The imbalance network and incremental evolution for mobile robot nervous system design

Abstract

Automatic design of neurocontrollers (as in Evoluationary Robotics) utilizes incremental evolution to solve for more complex behaviors. Also manual design techniques such as task decomposition are employed. Manual design itself can benefit from focusing on using incremental evolution to add more automatic design. The imbalance network is a neural network that integrates incremental evolution with an incremental design process without the need for task decomposition. Instead, the imbalance network uses the mechanism of the equilibrium-action cycle to structure the network while emphasizing behavior emergence. An example 11-step design (including a 5-step evolutionary process) is briefly mentioned to help ground the imbalance network concepts.