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  4. The Evolution of Information Suppression in Communicating Robots with Conflicting Interests
 
research article

The Evolution of Information Suppression in Communicating Robots with Conflicting Interests

Mitri, Sara  
•
Floreano, Dario  
•
Keller, Laurent
2009
Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America (PNAS)

Reliable information is a crucial factor influencing decision-making, and thus fitness in all animals. A common source of information comes from inadvertent cues produced by the behavior of conspecifics. Here we use a system of experimental evolution with robots foraging in an arena containing a food source to study how communication strategies can evolve to regulate information provided by such cues. Robots could produce information by emitting blue light, which other robots could perceive with their cameras. Over the first few generations, robots quickly evolved to successfully locate the food, while emitting light randomly. This resulted in a high intensity of light near food, which provided social information allowing other robots to more rapidly find the food. Because robots were competing for food, they were quickly selected to conceal this information. However, they never completely ceased to produce information. Detailed analyses revealed that this somewhat surprising result was due to the strength of selection in suppressing information declining concomitantly with the reduction in information content. Accordingly, a stable equilibrium with low information and considerable variation in communicative behaviors was attained by mutation-selection. Because a similar co-evolutionary process should be common in natural systems, this may explain why communicative strategies are so variable in many animal species.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1073/pnas.0903152106
Web of Science ID

WOS:000269806600051

Author(s)
Mitri, Sara  
Floreano, Dario  
Keller, Laurent
Date Issued

2009

Publisher

National Academy of Sciences

Published in
Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America (PNAS)
Volume

106

Issue

37

Start page

15786

End page

15790

Subjects

Cues

•

Signals

•

Evolution

•

Robots

•

Variation

•

Evolutionary Robotics

Note

communication

URL

URL

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/37/15786.short
Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LIS  
Available on Infoscience
July 9, 2009
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/41234
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