Research Area "Neurocybernetics"

Tools: Neural Network Toolbox (ISEE)*

The ISEE (Integrated Structure Evolution Environment) is a powerful software platform for the evolution of recurrent neural networks (RNN) for behaviour control of autonomous agents. It was originally developed to connect the ENS⊃3 algorithm with various robot simulators as fast and easy as possible. The connection to other evolution software is also possible. This ISEE platform combines three different components:

• the evolutionary core program (EvoSun),
• the simulator and
• the general interface (HINTON).

The EvoSun program implements variation, evaluation and selection operators acting on populations of (recurrent) neural networks. For application in the field of evolutionary robotics the evaluation of a controlling neural network is done during the simulation of the robot in a defined environment.

To keep the ISEE platform open to different robot platforms the HINTON-component is developed as a general interface. It realizes the interchange of evolved networks between the evolution core (EvoSun) and the robot simulator.

In addition, the HINTON-interface allows evolving several populations in parallel, i.e. the ISEE platform is easy to use for co-evolution.

Furthermore, parallel evolution of one population can be easily done. This type of distributed evolution can bring an important speed up of the evolutionary process.

Last but not least, the interface HINTON is also ready to be used as stand alone. In this mode different control architectures can be directly tested without a difficult and time consuming implementation in the simulator.