{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/a-minimal-developmental-model-can-increase","title":"A Minimal Developmental Model Can Increase Evolvability in Soft Robots","arxiv_id":"1706.07296","date":"2017-06-22","proceeding":null,"authors":["Sam Kriegman","Nick Cheney","Francesco Corucci","Josh C. Bongard"],"abstract":"Different subsystems of organisms adapt over many time scales, such as rapid\nchanges in the nervous system (learning), slower morphological and neurological\nchange over the lifetime of the organism (postnatal development), and change\nover many generations (evolution). Much work has focused on instantiating\nlearning or evolution in robots, but relatively little on development. Although\nmany theories have been forwarded as to how development can aid evolution, it\nis difficult to isolate each such proposed mechanism. Thus, here we introduce a\nminimal yet embodied model of development: the body of the robot changes over\nits lifetime, yet growth is not influenced by the environment. We show that\neven this simple developmental model confers evolvability because it allows\nevolution to sweep over a larger range of body plans than an equivalent\nnon-developmental system, and subsequent heterochronic mutations 'lock in' this\nbody plan in more morphologically-static descendants. Future work will involve\ngradually complexifying the developmental model to determine when and how such\nadded complexity increases evolvability.","url_abs":"http://arxiv.org/abs/1706.07296v1","url_pdf":"http://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.07296v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"a-minimal-developmental-model-can-increase","repo_url":"https://github.com/skriegman/gecco-2017","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=1706.07296","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"1706.07296"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-24T18:15:14+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. 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