Darwinian Dynamics of Embodied Chaotic Exploration

We present Embodied Chaotic Exploration (ECE), a novel direction of research into a possible candidate for Darwinian neural dynamics, where such dynamics are occurring not at the level of synaptic connections, but rather at the slightly higher and more abstract level of embodied motor pattern attractors. Crucially, the (chaotic) neuro dynamics are embodied and it is the whole neuro-body-environment system that must be considered, although the changes occur at the neural level. ECE incrementally explores and learns motor behaviors through an integrated combination of chaotic search and reflex learning. The architecture developed here allows real-time, goal-directed exploration and learning of the possible motor patterns (e.g. for locomotion) of embodied systems of arbitrary morphology. The overall iterative search process formed from this combination is shown to have strong parallels with evolutionary search.