An evolution friendly modular architecture to produce feasible robots

•We present a modular architecture to produce feasible robots through evolution.•The architecture is based on a set of a heterogeneous modules.•The modules contain a large number of connection faces per module.•The design and the implementation of prototype modules is described in detail.•Different experiments show its potential for evolving robot morphologies and control.

This paper proposes the use of a modular robotic architecture in order to produce feasible robots through evolution. To this end, the main requirements the architecture must fulfill are analyzed and a top-down methodology is employed to obtain the different types of modules that make it up. Specifically, the problem of how to increase the evolvability or evolution friendliness of the system is addressed by considering a heterogeneous modular architecture with a large number of connection faces per module. Afterwards, a prototypical implementation of these modules with the required features is described and different experiments provide an indication of how versatile the architecture is for evolving robot morphologies and control for specific tasks and how easy it is to build them.