Emergence of communication and language in evolving robots

Modeling the evolution of communication and language is one of the most fascinating and challenging problems in science. Progressing toward this ambitious goal implies explaining how simple communication forms emerged in the first place and how they evolved into structured communication systems with the characteristics of human language. In this chapter, we will illustrate how communication systems originate and evolve in a population of robots that adapt to a given task/environment. The analysis of these synthetic experiments can help us to understand: (i) how communication can emerge in a population of initially noncommunicating individuals, (ii) what conditions represent a prerequisite for the emergence of a robust and stable communication system, (iii) how the communication system changes by eventually increasing in complexity, and (iv) how signals and meanings originate and how they are grounded in robots’ sensorimotor states.