Key focus of conference was on grounded artificial life research. Main contributions in the embodiment of a-life in both real robots and simulated robotic agents. Stefan Nolfi is working in the area of developing autonomous robots through a self-organising process based on artificial evolution.
Complications arise for co-evolution stratagies.
One Ant Algorithm employs biologically inspired pheromone deposition to Positively Re-inforce the shortest path route. Applications of ant algorithms are, for instance, internet routing, task allocation, and sorting. Ant Algorithms have been tested against Travelling Salesman Problem, Quadratic Assignment Problem, Sequential Ordering Problem etc. I Richard Watson gave a talk on how symbiosis can guide evolution where individuals in a population which forge a symbiotic relationship to find a solution. This non-genetic mechanism is used to guide the genetic make up of organisms by shaping the evolutionary landscape.