Adaptive Behavior in Competing Co-Evolving Species

Abstract

Co-evolution of competitive species provides an interesting testbed to study the role of adaptive behavior because it provides unpredictable and dynamic environments. In this paper we experimentally investigate some arguments for the coevolution of different adaptive protean behaviors in competing species of predators and preys. Both species are implemented as mobile robots (Kheperas) with infrared proximity sensors, but the predator has an additional vision module whereas the prey has a maximum speed set to twice that of the predator. By comparing different types of variability during life for neurocontrollers with the same architecture and genetic length, it is shown that simple forms of proteanism affect coevolutionary dynamics and that preys rather exploit noisy controllers to generate random trajectories, whereas predators benefit from directionalchange controllers to improve pursuit behavior. 1 Introduction Adaptive behavior --as compared to innate and fixed behavior-- might re...