In: Artificial Life X : Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems, edited by L. M. Rocha and L. S. Yaeger and M. A. Bedau and D. Floreano and R. L. Goldstone and A. Vespignani. International Society for Artificial Life, MIT Press, pages 192–198.
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Self-organization and the phenomenen of emergence play an
essential role in living systems and form a challenge to
artificial life systems. This is not only because systems
become more life like but also since self-organization may
help in reducing the design efforts in creating complex
behavior systems. The present paper exemplifies a general
approach to the self-organization of behavior which has
been developed and tested in various examples in recent
years. We apply this approach to a spherical robot driven
by shifting internal masses. The complex physics of this
robotic object is completely unknown to the controller.
Nevertheless after a short time the robot develops
systematic rolling movements covering large distances with
high velocity. In a hilly landscape it is capable of
manoeuvering out of the basins and in landscapes with a
fixed rotational geometry the robot more or less adatps its
movements to this geometry – the controller so to say
develops a kind of feeling for its environment although
there are no sensors for measuring the positions or the
velocity of the robot. We argue that this behavior is a
result of the spontaneous symmetry breaking effects which
are responsible for the emergence of behavior in our
approach.