UVM professor explores robot's ability to evolve | The Burlington Free Press
If you had to choose the word that best describes the robots Josh Bongard has been working with lately, “robotic” would not be it.
“Adaptive” is more like it. He designs robots that can change or evolve — in body and in mind. “Mind,” that is, to the extent that a robot has a one, or a brain, in the form of the program that’s driving it.
Bongard, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Vermont, got some attention a few years ago for his work on a robot dubbed “Starfish” that taught itself to walk. His recent research, which has also received national notice, looks at a robot with a flexible spine and four legs. Robots with this physique are given a simple task (the scientific term is “phototaxis”): to move from Point A to Point B (a light source) as quickly as possible, without falling.
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