Evolution of central pattern generators for bipedal walking in a real-time physics environment

We describe an evolutionary approach to the control problem of bipedal walking. Using a full rigid-body simulation of a biped, it was possible to evolve recurrent neural networks that controlled stable straight-line walking on a planar surface. No proprioceptive information was necessary in order to achieve this task. Furthermore, simple sensory input to locate a sound source was integrated to achieve directional walking. To our knowledge, this is the first work that demonstrates the application of evolutionary optimization to 3D physically simulated biped locomotion.