An Autonomous Drive Balancing Strategy for the Design of Purpose in Open-ended Learning Robots

This paper is concerned with designing purpose in autonomous robots for open-ended learning settings. Unconstrained human robot interaction situations and robotic systems that must operate in dynamic multi-robot scenarios are paradigmatic examples of open-endedness. An approach to the appropriate design and engineering of motivational structures to endow robots with a particular purpose is proposed and tested. This approach focuses on the drive structure and how it can be made to autonomously adapt to changing circumstances. Specifically, a simple evolutionary strategy for the autonomous regulation of multiple drives in order to optimize long-term operation is defined. The experimental results have been obtained on a Baxter robot facing changing situations in real setups.