Sponsor: National Science Foundation (CISE/CNS Division)
Collaborators: Prof. Phil McKinley (PI, Computer Science and Engineering or CSE), Prof. Betty Cheng (Co-PI, CSE) , Prof. Charles Ofria (Co-PI, CSE), Prof. Robert Pennock (Co-PI, Lyman Briggs College and Philosophy)
The increasing interaction between computing technology and the physical world requires that systems be able to adapt to changing conditions, compensate for hardware and software failures, fend off attacks, and optimize performance, all with minimal human intervention. Robust operation is especially important among collections of small devices, such as micro-robots and sensors that need to perform complex distributed tasks despite adverse operating conditions. Digital evolution offers a means to produce robust computational behaviors and customize them for target hardware and environments. In digital evolution, populations of self-replicating computer programs are subject to random mutations in dynamic environments, leading to evolution by natural selection.
In this infrastructure project a testbed has been constructed to support studying digital evolution of complex distributed behaviors and their evaluation on heterogeneous computing systems. The testbed includes a large water tank, custom-built robotic fish, fleets of terrestrial mobile robots, and stationary sensors, as well as a rack-mounted parallel processor for evolving large-scale systems. The testbed is now supporting research projects addressing energy-efficient mobility control for swarms of mobile devices, adaptive communication protocols, and self-adaptive and self-healing software. To maximize its impact, the testbed has been integrated with existing facilities, creating a rich computing and communication fabric for experimental research.
The following picture shows a 15 by 10 by 4 ft water tank acquired as part of the testbed, for studying collaborative control of robotic fish.
