With plans to take over Mars sometime in the foreseeable future, plans of exploring distant planets and making them a home fit for humans have also become a topic and challenge for scientists as they locate habitable planets like Earth, determining how to get there, and what humanity can do to make the place feel like home.
Autonomous robots that can have "children" are in development.
Using Robots for Colonization of Distant Planets
According to The Next Web, some scientists believe that humanity will need an advanced convoy of robots that will turn hostile environments into favorable ones.
The robots need to be tough, adaptable, and recyclable so they could survive any kind of inhospitable environment they are met with, so a team of scientists, including Emma Hart of Edinburgh Napier University in the United Kingdom, as well as computer scientists and roboticists, have worked together to create such types of robots, which are produced via 3D printer and are assembled autonomously.
According to Hart's article on The Conversation, computer scientists have been harnessing the power of artificial evolution for years.
Practically, artificial evolution is the modeling of evolutionary processes within computers, and it only takes a few hours or even minutes, unlike the Darwinian theory of evolution that takes years.
Hart wrote that if artificial evolution is to be used for creating robots for the sole purpose of space exploration and colonization of distant planets, it's necessary to remove humans from the equation altogether, allowing robot designs to manufacture, assemble, and even test themselves autonomously.
Furthermore, Hart noted that robots in question should have ways of sensing their environment and have diverse means of moving, meaning adding jointed legs and wheels is necessary.
'Baby' Robots 'Born' From a 'Mother' and 'Father'
With that, the group has created the Autonomous Robot Evolution (ARE) project, which brings together experts from various universities to embark on a four-year project to develop such robots that will be "born" through 3D printing.
The team will use a "new kind of hybrid hardware-software evolutionary architecture for design," which means every robot will have a digital clone.
Every physical robot will be tested in real-world environments, while its clone will undergo a rapid simulated evolution through a software program, wherein new generations of robots or the "babies" will inherit the most successful traits of a virtual "mother" and a physical "father."
After being rendered through the simulation, the "child" robot will be 3D-printed and then introduced into the real-world for performance tests.
Then, the most successful ones within the physical training center will have its "genetic code" used for mass production of the robots that will most likely be sent in future space exploration mission, while the "unfit" ones will be recycled into new ones for an ongoing evolutionary cycle.
The Progress So Far
The ARE project is in its second year, and it appears that the scientists have made significant process.
Scientifically, they have already designed an artificial evolutionary algorithm that has produced diverse types of robots that could crawl and drive and navigate through complex mazes, while on the engineering aspect, they have designed the "RoboFab," which is for fully automated manufacturing.
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Written by: Nhx Tingson
