This paper focuses on the well-known problem in behavioral robotics – “what to do next”. The problem addressed here lies in the selection of one activity to be executed from multiple regulative, homeostatic and developmental processes running onboard a reconfigurable multi-robot organism. We consider adaptive hardware and software frameworks and argue the non-triviality of action selection for evolutionary robotics. The paper overviews several deliberative, evolutionary and bio-inspired approaches for such an adaptive action selection mechanism.

c t i v it y e p o r t 2009 Table of contents

the perspective of its potential users: roboticists. The core hypothesis motivating this field of research will be discussed, as well as the potential use of ER in a robot design process. Three main aspects of ER will be presented: (a) ER as an automatic parameter tuning procedure, which is the most mature application and is used to solve real robotics problem, (b) evolutionary-aided design, which may benefit the designer as an efficient tool to build robotic systems and (c) automatic synthesis, which corresponds to the automatic design of a mechatronic device. Critical issues will also be presented as well as current trends and pespectives in ER. I.