Evolution in human beings and other species has been well documented. The concept is simple. The traits that are important  for survival are passed on to the next generation. It is credited with developing sharper senses, opposable thumbs and other mental and physical traits that made it easier to survive. The documentation of scientific evidence allows us to proclaim that without evolution, we as a species would definitely have been wiped out.

Considering the fact that all the electronics that we use is also being wiped out, or becoming obsolete as soon as the technology improves, we may be better off if we can program robots to evolve with the new technology. It is with this idea that two research teams in Zurich and Cambridge came up with a science project to build robots that could evolve in successive generations.

The mother robot is essentially a robotic arm which uses small cubes which are baby robots to build new arrangeable patterns of robots that are given a task. The mother is programmed to insert random mutations into the genome of each successive generation. The genetic blueprints of successful robots are the ones that get used next time round while deficient ones are discarded. After about ten generations the robots were performing twice as well as the first generation.