Robots used for evolution research?!

A collaborative research project between EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne) and University of Lausanne demonstrated that robots could indeed evolve and get smarter by themselves. Doesn't this remind us of the Terminator movie?

The experiment setup was an arena where robots were let free-roaming to find “food” and avoid “poison”.
The intelligence of the tested robots was consisted of randomly generated parameters representing “genes”. They defined the robots’ behaviors in the way they move, search for food, and communicate.
The bots that avoided “poison” and found “food” fast were picked out from the group and only their “genes” were saved and passed on to the next generation. The entire process mimicked Darwin’s natural selection. After 500 generations of pure breeding, sophisticated communication patterns were observed.
Under different selection criteria, robots could either nurture team spirit for collectively success or develop individualistic personalities and go political on each other (luring others to the “poison” instead). Now folks, if 500 generations of evolution already caused robotic “drama”, it won’t be long till we discover a Shakespeare made of metal nuts.