164 Int. J. Bio-Inspired Computation, Vol. 1, No. 3, 2009 Copyright © 2009 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Evolving hardware using a new evolutionary algorithm based on evolution of a species Celso De La Cruz and Teodiano Bastos-Filho Electrical Engineering Department, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Vitória, Brazil E-mail: celsodelacruz@gmail.com E-mail: tfbastos@ele.ufes.br Héctor D. Patiño* and Ricardo Carelli Instituto de Automática, Universidad Nacional de San Juan, 1109 San Martín Oeste, San Juan, Argentina E-mail: dpatino@inaut.unsj.edu.ar E-mail: rcarelli@inaut.unsj.edu.ar *Corresponding author Abstract: This work presents the analysis of species evolution properties which are considered to design a new evolutionary algorithm for evolvable hardware. These properties reduce the risk of malfunctions in a physical system when it is evolving. A mathematical model, that characterises the natural evolution phenomena of a species, is proposed. A new evolutionary algorithm based on this model is proposed as well. This algorithm is designed to evolve hardware, e.g., to obtain the optimal control parameters of a real control system, while it is executing a repetitive task. The convergence of the proposed algorithm was proven by means of new theorems. Simulations and experimentation studies were carried out in order to validate the theoretical aspects and to evaluate the performance of the evolutionary algorithm. Keywords: evolutionary algorithms; evolvable hardware; robot systems; optimisation methods; species evolution; mathematical modelling; bio-inspired computation. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: De La Cruz, C., Bastos-Filho, T., Patiño, H.D. and Carelli, R. (2009) ‘Evolving hardware using a new evolutionary algorithm based on evolution of a species’, Int. J. Bio-Inspired Computation, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp.164–176. Biographical notes: Celso De La Cruz received his PhD in Control Systems Engineering from the ‘Universidad Nacional de San Juan’, Argentina, in 2006. He is currently a Postdoctoral student in Electrical Engineering at the ‘Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo’, Brazil. His current research interests include evolutionary computation analysis, dynamic modelling and control design of mobile vehicles. Teodiano Freire Bastos-Filho graduated in Electrical Engineering at the Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo – UFES, Vitória, Brazil in 1987. He received his specialisation in Automation in 1989 at the Instituto de Automatica Industrial, Madrid, Spain and his PhD in 1994 in Physical Science (Electricity and Electronics) at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. He is currently an Associate Professor at UFES. His current research interests are mobile robots and assistive technology for handicapped people. Héctor Daniel Patiño received his Electronic Engineering degree and his PhD in Engineering from the Universidad Nacional de San Juan (UNSJ), Argentina, in 1986 and 1995 respectively. He is an Associate Professor in the Instituto de Automática and the Electronics and Automatics Department, Faculty of Engineering, UNSJ. His current research areas cover computational intelligence, advanced optimal control, approximate adaptive dynamic programming, robotics, systems and control theory, data mining and computational finance. Ricardo Carelli received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the National University of Mexico (UNAM). He is a Full Professor at the National University of San Juan and Senior Researcher of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET, Argentina). He is the Director of the Instituto de Automática, National University of San Juan (Argentina). His research interests are on robotics, manufacturing systems, adaptive control and artificial intelligence applied to automatic control.