Computer Creativity in the Automatic Design of Robots Jordan B. Pollack, Gregory S. Hornby, Hod Lipson* and Pablo Funes 18th July 2002 DEMO Laboratory Computer Science Dept., Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02454, USA, www.demo.cs.brandeis.edu pollack,hornby,funes@cs.brandeis.edu *School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA hod.lipson@cornell.edu Abstract The central issue addressed by this work is the ability to automatically design robots with complex morphologies and a tightly adapted control sys- tem at low cost. Inspired by nature, automatic design is achieved by using an artificial co-evolutionary process to discover the body and brain of arti- ficial life forms simultaneously through interaction with a simulated reality. Through the use of rapid manufacturing, these evolved designs can be trans- ferred from virtual to true reality. The artificial evolution process embedded in realistic physical simulation can create simple designs, often recogniz- able from the history of biology or engineering. This paper provides a brief review of three generations of these robots, from automatically designed LEGO structures, through the "GOLEM" project of electromechanical sys- tems, to new modular designs which make use of a generative, DNA-like, representation. 1