CompetEvo: Towards Morphological Evolution from Competition

TL;DR

CompetEvo introduces a co-evolutionary approach for agents' morphology and tactics in multiagent combat, leading to more effective designs and emergent behaviors in confrontation scenarios.

Contribution

This paper presents a novel competitive evolution method that co-evolves agent morphology and tactics, addressing the challenge of optimal configurations in multiagent competitions.

Findings

Agents evolve more effective combat strategies.

Emergent behaviors appear under asymmetrical morphs.

Evolved agents outperform fixed-morph counterparts.

Abstract

Training an agent to adapt to specific tasks through co-optimization of morphology and control has widely attracted attention. However, whether there exists an optimal configuration and tactics for agents in a multiagent competition scenario is still an issue that is challenging to definitively conclude. In this context, we propose competitive evolution (CompetEvo), which co-evolves agents' designs and tactics in confrontation. We build arenas consisting of three animals and their evolved derivatives, placing agents with different morphologies in direct competition with each other. The results reveal that our method enables agents to evolve a more suitable design and strategy for fighting compared to fixed-morph agents, allowing them to obtain advantages in combat scenarios. Moreover, we demonstrate the amazing and impressive behaviors that emerge when confrontations are conducted under asymmetrical morphs.