Evolve Soft Robot

Author: Jiyuan Hu, Xingsheng Wei

Description:

1. Use MATLAB to build a physics simulator from scratch by creating mass and spring elements, velocity proportional damping and friction law.
2. Use evolutionary algorithm (EA) to evolve a soft robot that "walks" as fast as possible along x-axis. (For practice purpose the algorithm is written without using EA related libraries).
3. Matlab code, requires Parallel Computing Toolbox.

Portfolio Page:

https://xw2815.wixsite.com/xingshengwei/evolve-soft-robot

Contents:

run_script.m

The main script to run evolution.

replay_script.m

Run the simulation of the best saved genome and output a video.

Mass.m

A class of mass that can be connected to spring with dynamics.

Spring.m

A class of spring that can be connected to masses with dynamics.

Robot.m

A class of soft robot that assembled with masses and springs, which can execute dynamics by time steps.

Simulation.m

A class of simulation that makes simulation environments with default parameters, which can step the robot and evaluate the speed on X direction.

Renderer.m

A class of renderer that renders soft robot to images and videos.

Population.m

A class that contains a population of genomes that can perform crossover, mutation, sorting and plotting fitness curve.

Test.m

Test script that tests critical functions. (To be updated)