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.
This infrastructure project will construct a testbed to support digital evolution of complex distributed behaviors and their evaluation on heterogeneous computing systems. The testbed will include terrestrial mobile robots, custom-built robotic fish, and stationary sensors, as well as a rack-mounted parallel processor for on-line software evolution. The testbed will support 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 will be integrated with existing facilities, creating a rich computing and communication fabric for experimental research.
