A team of scientists at Cambridge University has developed a mother robot that can build her own offsprings. The team said that the mother robot tests which among her offsprings is best and then modifies their design.

The team released a video showing the mother robot building its own 'cube babies' before watching them taking their first steps. The mother robot after building monitors the progress of its offspring and then selects which one performs the best among them.

The mother robot then selects the best baby robot and refines its design in the same way the evolution works in real nature.

As per study researchers, it is for the first time that a process of natural selection has been built into a machine. It also marks as an important step in the quest for artificial intelligence.

The team in an explanation stated that the robot has been programmed to build a cube-bot with a small motor inside. The motor helps in the movement and then refines the design based on observations of how efficiently it moves.

In five experiments the mother-bot was allowed to continue building her children until 10 generations had been created, every time it used the fittest baby bot to inform the design of the next child.

Researchers found that preferential traits were passed down through generations so that the last cube-bots performed their task twice as quickly as the first individuals.

Dr Fumiya Iida of Cambridge's Department of Engineering said, "Natural selection is basically based on reproduction, assessment, and so on. That's what this robot is doing - we can actually watch the improvement and diversification of the species".