It begins.

After monitoring the progress of its offspring, the mother-bot then selects which have performed the best and refines their design in the same way that evolution works in nature. 

It is the first time that the process of natural selection has been successfully built into a machine and marks an important step forward in the quest for artificial intelligence. 

The robot has been programmed to build a cube-bot with a small motor inside which is capable of movement then refine the design based on observations of how efficiently it moves. 

In five separate experiments the mother-bot was allowed to continue building her children until 10 generations had been created, each time using the ‘fittest’ bot to inform the design of the next child.