IEEE Task Force on Evolutionary Developmental Systems and Robotics

Aim and Scope

The objective of this task force is to strengthen the links between evolutionary approaches in artificial intelligence and the developmental and cognitive systems community. There are many potential convergences and common discussion topics, including, but not limited to:

- A large part of the evolutionary intelligence community work on “Generative and Developmental Encoding” to evolve large, life-like neural networks (“artificial brains”); as the name suggest it, these encoding exploit developmental rules to make large neural networks that exhibit some features of biological nervous systems like modularity, hierarchy, repetition, symmetry, etc.

- A new trend in evolutionary intelligence is to study alternative selective pressures and, in particular, selective pressures that encourage exploration (novelty search, behavioral diversity, etc.); these techniques share many objectives and ideas with the exploration algorithms studied in the developmental robotics community (e.g. babbling).

- Evolution can be an effective metaphore to explain and therefore imitate the plasticity of the brain (see neural darwinism and neural replicators).

- Evolution and life-time learning are two complementary processes that interact at different scales and a key research avenue is to understand what should be designed by evolution and what should be left for life-time learning.

Task Force Chair:

Stéphane Doncieux, Sorbonne Université, France

Task Force Vice-Chairs:

Gusz Eiben, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands

Jim Torresen, University of Oslo, Norway

Task Force Members:

Andrea Soltoggio, Loughborough University, UK

Emma Hart, Edinburgh Napier University, UK

Eric Medvet, University of Trieste, Italy

Jared M. Moore, Grand Valley State University, US

Jean-Baptiste Mouret, INRIA, France

Jeff Clune, University of Wyoming/Uber AI Labs, US

Kyrre Glette, University of Oslo, Norway

Nicolas Bredeche, Sorbonne Université, France

Sanaz Mostaghim, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany

Sebastian Risi, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Stefano Nichele, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway

2025

• Stefano Nichele Chair of the IEEE Symposium on CI in Artificial Life and Cooperative Intelligent Systems (IEEE ALIFE-CIS) in Trondheim, Norway, March 2025 https://ieee-ssci.org/?ui=ci-in-artificial-life-and-cooperative-intelligent-systems

• Eric Medvet co-organizer (and host) of the evostar* conference in Trieste, in April 2025 (see https://www.evostar.org/2025/)

• Eric Medvet Symposium Industry Co-Chair of the IEEE Symposium on CI in Artificial Life and Cooperative Intelligent Systems (IEEE ALIFE-CIS) in Trondheim, in March 2025

2024

• Eric Medvet co-organizer of the Interpretable Control Competition, at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2024)

• Eric Medvet program chair of the Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE 2024)

• Eric Medvet co-organizer of the special session on Cellular Automata, Distributed Dynamical Systems, and Their Applications to Intelligence at the Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE 2024)

• Andrea Soltoggio led a team of scientists to publish the perspective paper “A collective AI via lifelong learning and sharing at the edge” in Nature Machine Intelligence, March 2024.

• Edson Prestes, Praminda Caleb-Solly, Yueh Hsuan Weng and Jim Torresen organised Workshop on Robot Ethics – Ethical, Legal and User Perspectives in Robotics and Automation (WOROBET) at the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) May 13-17, 2024

• Jim Torresen, Workshop organisers and co-chairs for the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robot Ethics

• Jim Torresen, "AI Ethics – Challenges and Opportunities” FUZZ-IEEE Keynote Talk at WCCI 2024

• Jim Tørresen and Xin Yao, "Ethical Risks and Challenges of Computational Intelligence” tutorial at IJCNN/WCCI 2024

• Emma Hart gave a keynote talk at EANN conference “An Evolutionary Approach to the Autonomous Design and Fabrication of Robots for Operation in Unknown Environments” in June 24 https://eannconf.org/2024/keynote-speakers/

• Kyrre Glette and Kai Olav Ellefsen are organizing the tutorial "Automatic Design of Robot Bodies and Brains with Evolutionary Algorithms" at ALIFE 2024. https://2024.alife.org/tutorials.html

• Sebastian Risi: vice general chair Alife Conference in Copenhagen https://2024.alife.org/organization.html

• Jeff Clune & Gail Murphy: "Pitfalls and Potential: Integrating Generative AI into Your Research and Scholarship" Univ. of British Columbia event broadcast.

2023

• Nicolas Bredeche co-chair of the Complex System track at the ACM GECCO conference (July, Lisbon, Portugal)

• Stephane Doncieux with Antoine Cully and Jean-Baptiste Mouret will be presenting a tutorial on QD algorithms at GECCO 2023. 15–19 July, 2023.

• Jean-Baptiste Mouret, Stephane Doncieux together with Antoine Cully, Matthew Fontaine, Adam Gaier, Amy Hoover, Stefanos Nikolaidis, John Rieffel, Julian Togelius are organizing a workshop on QD Benchmarks

• Stephane Doncieux together with Georg Martius, Sao Mai Nguyen, Emre Ugur and Johann Huber, are organizing the IMOL 2023 workshop

• Frank Veenstra, Emma Stensby Norstein, and Kyrre Glette are organizing the tutorial «Evolving Robot Bodies and Brains in Unity” at the ALIFE 2023 conference. https://2023.alife.org/programme/tutorials/

• Eric Medvet co-chair of the workshop The Distributed Ghost: Cellular Automata, Distributed Dynamical Systems, and their applications to intelligence, at the Conference on Artificial Life

• Jeff Clune Co-organizer, Workshop on Learning from Diverse, Oine Data (L-DOD), ICRA 2023

2022

• Kyrre Glette hosted a special session on evolutionary robotics (with Frank Veenstra) at Evostar 2022

• Frontiers research topic on “Evolving Robotic Morphologies” (Glette with Howard, Cheney) was finalized in 2022

• Nicolas Bredeche was co-chair of the Complex System track at the ACM GECCO conference (July, Boston, USA)

• Eric Medvet, Karine Miras (topic coordinator) , Giovanni Iacca and Lisa Soros (topic editors) are editing a Research Topic about Artificial Living Beings: Field “Cross-Fertilization on Frontiers in Robotics and AI

• Stephane Doncieux with Antoine Cully and Jean-Baptiste Mouret have presented a tutorial on QD algorithms at GECCO 2022. 9–13 July, 2022.

• Jim Torresen has given a tutorial a WCCI2022: Ethical Challenges in Computational Intelligence Research, July 18, 2022 in Padova, Italy

• Jim Torresen has given a tutorial at ICDL2022:Rhythm in Development and Learning – Similarities and Differences Between Humans and Technology, September 12, 2022 in London, UK

• Jim Torresen together with co-organizers Atsushi Nakazawa, Diana Saplacan, Edson Prestes and Tobias Mahler has given a tutorial at IROS2022: Ethical, Legal and User Perspectives on Robots and Systems (ELAUPORAS) – Assessments and Potential Measures Related to Robots and Systems Format, October 23, 2022, Kyoto, Japan

2021

• Stephane Doncieux with Antoine Cully and Jean-Baptiste Mouret will present a tutorial on QD algorithms at GECCO 2021. 10–14 July, 2021. There will also be another relevant workshop at the same conference: EvoRL – Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning Workshop organised by colleagues.

• Stefano Nichele (together with Giovanni Iacca and Eric Medvet) will organise a Special Session on Bio-inspired Approaches for Modular Robotics at ALIFE 2021, 19-23 July, 2021

• Stephane Doncieux is involved in IROS 2021 workshop entitled "New Horizons for Robot Learning and common obstacles of result transfer to industry"

• Jeff Clune will give the keynote Improving Robot and Deep Reinforcement Learning via Quality Diversity, Open-Ended, and AI-Generating Algorithms at CORL 2021 (November 8 – 11)

• Jeff Clune gave a keynote at the ICLR 2021 Neural Architecture Search Workshop, 7 May 2021

• Jim Torresen gave the tutorial "Ethical Considerations in Robotics and Automation" at ICRA 2021

• Gusz Eiben (together with Andy Tyrrell and Emma Hart) is a guest editors for a Special Issue on Towards autonomous evolution, (re)production and learning in robotic eco-systems, IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems

• Kyrre Glette (together with David Howard and Nick Cheney) is editing a Research Topic “Evolving Robotic Morphologies” in Frontiers in Robotics and AI

2020

• Stéphane Doncieux (together with Antoine Cully and Jean-Baptiste Mouret) gave a tutorial at GECCO 2020 on Quality-Diversity Optimization

• Gusz Eiben (together with Emma Hart and David Howard) organised a the workshop "ADRR — Automated Design of Robots for the Real-world" at GECCO 2020

• Special issue of Congitive Neurosynamics (Springer) as follow up of the workshop we organized at IEEE ICDL-EPIROB in Oslo. Link https://www.springer.com/journal/11571/updates/17312386

• Special Issue (SI) on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics in IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems. SI with extended versions of the best papers presented in the 2019 ICDL-EpiRob conference.

• Stefano Nichele is co-chairing IEEE ALIFE at IEEE SSCI 2020. Both “evolutionary developmental systems” and robotics are within the scope. Link: http://www.ieeessci2020.org/symposiums/alife.html. Location Canberra Australia, 1-4 December 2020. 

2019

• Jeff Clune, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE)

• Stéphane Doncieux, lectures a course at the International Summer School on Intrinsically Motivated Open-Ended Learning (http://www.goal-robots.eu/announcements/events/summer-school-2019-2

• Stéphane Doncieux, "Open-ended learning in robotics", talk at the IMOL 2019 workshop (http://www.imol-conf.org

• 9th Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics. August 19-22, 2019 in Oslo, Norway. Paper submission deadline 22 February, 2019. Early registration deadline June 15, 2019.

• Stéphane Doncieux and Sebastian Risi will co-chair the complex systems track at GECCO 2019.

• Nicolas Bredeche, Jean-Baptiste Mouret and Stéphane Doncieu will give a tutorial on ER at GECCO 2019.

• Gusz Eiben and Kyrre Glette are robotics area chairs for EvoApplications 2019, http://www.evostar.org/2019/cfp_evoapps.php

2018

• Alex Alcocer (OsloMet) chaired the Autonomy Day 2018 – 2nd Workshop on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems, 3 May in Oslo, Norway including talks on ER.

• Stéphane Doncieux, Joshua Auerbach, Richard Duro and Harold P. de Vladar organized the workshop "Evolution in Cognition" at the GECCO conference in 2018, see https://sites.google.com/champlain.edu/eic2018/ .

• Stéphane Doncieux organised a workshop on cognitive and developmental robotics at Sorbonne University, the 19th of April 2018 (with Verena Hafner, Jose Santos Victor, Gianluca Baldassare, Emre Ugur, Raja Chatila and Doncieux as speakers)

• Stéphane Doncieux has also organized a research topic in Frontiers, see https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/4233/evolvability-environments-embodiment-emergence-in-robotics.

• Stéphane Doncieux organised an exhibition at the Palais de la Découverte from March to May 2018 (the link with some informations about that in French: http://www.palais-decouverte.fr/fr/ressources/docs-1chercheur1manip/des-robots-qui-apprennent/).

• July 2018: Tutorial on Evolutionary Robotics at GECCO 2018 N. Bredeche, S. Doncieux and J-B. Mouret.

• Stéphane Doncieux has given several talks about the DREAM project in different contexts (7 in 2018 for academics and 4 for the general public, with an audience varying between 20 people and more than 300).

• Kyrre Glette co-chaired the EvoROBOT track at EvoApplications 2018, http://www.evostar.org/2018/cfp_evorobot.php

• Video showing the DyRET robot at the University of Oslo and some outdoor experiments. Nbcnews.com, 25 June 2018

• Interview Tønnes Nygaard at the University of Oslo about the DyRET robot and evolutionary robotics. Digitaltrends.com, 23. may 2018

• Interview with Tønnes Nygaard about the DyRET robot and work developing it at the University of Oslo. Wired.com, 18. may 2018

2017

• Stefano Nichele chaired the Workshop on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems, 11 May in Oslo including talks on ER.

• Sept 2017: Nicolas Bredèche Tutorial chair at ECAL 2017

• Sept 2017: Proceedings of the Fourteenth European Conference Artificial Life, ECAL 2017 (MIT Press 2017, ISBN 978-0-262-34633-7). Editors: Carole Knibbe, Guillaume Beslon, David P. Parsons, Dusan Misevic, Jonathan Rouzaud-Cornabas, Nicolas Bredèche, Salima Hassas, Olivier Simonin, Hédi Soula.

• Sept 2017: Workshop on evolving physical systems at ECAL 2017. Organizers: John Rieffel, Jean-Baptiste Mouret, Nicolas Bredèche, Evert Haasdijk

• July 2017: Workshop on evolving collective behaviors in robotics at GECCO 2017, Organizers: N. Bredeche, E. Haasdijk, A. Prieto and H. Hamman.

• July 2017: Tutorial on Evolutionary Robotics at GECCO 2017. Organizers: N. Bredeche, S. Doncieux and J-B. Mouret.

• June 2017: special issue on evolving physical systems of ALIFE journal (MIT press). Editors: John Rieffel, Jean-Baptiste Mouret, Nicolas Bredèche, Evert Haasdijk

2016

• Sept.2016: Tutorial chair at PPSN 2016. chairs: N. Bredeche and Carola Doerr 

2015

• Stéphane Doncieux initiated a dialogue on “Representational redescription in humans and machines”, in the IEEE CIS Newsletter on CDS, 12(1).

• JB Mouret, J Clune, A. Cully and D. Tarapore published a milestone article in Nature: Cully, A., Clune, J., Tarapore, D., & Mouret, J. B. (2015). Robots that can adapt like animals1. Nature, 521 (7553), 503-507.

• July 2015: Sebastian Risi and Jean-Baptiste Mouret are co-chairing the “Generative and Developmental Systems” track a GECCO’2015 (Madrid)

• April 2015: Sebastian Risi was local chair or Evostar 2015 conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

• Jean-Baptiste Mouret, Nicolas Bredeche and Stéphane Doncieux presented a 3-hour tutorial about Evolutionary Robotics at GECCO 2015 (Madrid, Spain) and ECAL 2015 (York, UK)

• Sebastian Risi will do a lecture about “Bio-inspired, Automated Design of Machine Bodies and Artificial Brains” at for the Czech European Robotics Week (Prague, November 2015).

• July 2015: Tutorial on Evolutionary Robotics at GECCO 2015 and at ECAL 2015. Organizers: N. Bredeche, S. Doncieux and J-B. Mouret.

• July 2015: Fourth workshop on Evolving Physical Systems at ECAL 2015. Organizers: John Rieffel, Jean-Baptiste Mouret, Nicolas Bredèche, Evert Haasdijk

• July 2015: First workshop on Evolving Collective Behaviours for Robotics at GECCO 2015. Organizers: N. Bredeche, A. Prieto and E. Haasdijk.