Emergence of novel individual relationships in evolution of artificial creatures and its application to understand ecological interactions and engineering

2020 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K11467
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 61040:Soft computing-related
• Research Institution: Nagoya University
• Principal Investigator: SUZUKI REIJI 名古屋大学, 情報学研究科, 准教授 (20362296)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2021-03-31
• Keywords: 仮想生物進化 / 進化的新奇性 / 資源共有問題 / 鳥類の歌行動 / 人工生命

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We constructed a framework for emergence and evolution of acoustic communication in the population of virtual creatures that can make sounds in a 3D physically simulated environment, aiming at understanding emergence of novel individual relationships and its application to understand ecological interactions and engineering. The experiments with several settings showed that the framework enables us to discuss the evolution of collective behaviors, exaptation, and acoustic niche separation, originating from an inevitable noise generated by behaviors of embodied agents. We also developed a framework for observing vocal interactions among songbirds in fields using a robot audition software HARK, and observed their behavioral patterns quantitatively.

Free Research Field

人工生命

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

仮想物理空間上の生物の体と動きを同時に進化させる手法が，リーダとフォロワー，群れ行動，音声の周波数領域の棲み分けなど，音を介した個体間関係が創発する過程の議論に役立つことが示された．これは，相互作用するロボット集団設計などの工学的観点や，同時に開発したロボット聴覚技術に基づくシステムによって観測する鳥類の鳴き声相互作用などの実生態との比較に基づく理解からも重要であるといえる．