Prototyping robotic systems is a time consuming process. Computer aided design, however, might speed up the process significantly. Quality-diversity evolutionary approaches optimise for novelty as well as performance, and can be used to generate a repertoire of diverse designs. This design repertoire could be used as a tool to guide a designer and kick-start the rapid prototyping process. This paper explores this idea in the context of mechanical linkage based robots. These robots can be a good test-bed for rapid prototyping, as they can be modified quickly for swift iterations in design. We compare three evolutionary algorithms for optimising 2D mechanical linkages: 1) a standard evolutionary algorithm, 2) the multi-objective algorithm NSGA-II, and 3) the quality-diversity algorithm MAP-Elites. Some of the found linkages are then realized on a physical hexapod robot through a prototyping process, and tested on two different floors. We find that all the tested approaches, except the standard evolutionary algorithm, are capable of finding mechanical linkages that creates a path similar to a specified desired path. However, the quality-diversity approaches that had the length of the linkage as a behaviour descriptor were the most useful when prototyping. This was due to the quality-diversity approaches having a larger variety of similar designs to choose from, and because the search could be constrained by the behaviour descriptors to make linkages that were viable for construction on our hexapod platform.

翻译：原型机器人系统的开发是一个耗时过程。然而，计算机辅助设计可以显著加快这一进程。质量-多样性进化方法同时优化新颖性和性能，可用于生成多样化设计的储备库。这种设计储备库可作为指导设计师的工具，并启动快速原型设计过程。本文在基于机械连杆的机器人背景下探索了这一思路。这类机器人因其可快速修改以进行设计迭代，成为快速原型设计的理想测试平台。我们比较了三种用于优化二维机械连杆的进化算法：1）标准进化算法，2）多目标算法NSGA-II，以及3）质量-多样性算法MAP-Elites。随后，通过原型设计过程将部分发现的连杆实现在六足机器人实体上，并在两种不同地面进行测试。我们发现，除标准进化算法外，所有测试方法均能生成轨迹与指定目标路径相似的机械连杆。然而，当进行原型设计时，将连杆长度作为行为描述符的质量-多样性方法最具实用性。这是因为质量-多样性方法提供了更多样化的相似设计方案可供选择，并且通过行为描述符限制搜索范围，可生成适用于我们六足平台构建的可行连杆。