Information trade-offs and the evolution of sensory layouts

In nature, sensors evolve to capture relevant information needed for organisms of a particular species to survive and reproduce. In this paper we study how sensor layouts may evolve in different environments and under pressure of different informational constraints. To do this we evolve sensor layouts for different environments and constraints using a fitness measure with weighted terms for redundancy and novelty, using, respectively, mutual information and Crutchfield's information metric. The results show how different sensor layouts evolve depending on the structure and complexity of the environment but also how selective pressure for redundancy or novelty might affect the design.