Developing of the brain is highly interconnected with our senses. To simulate the natural brain development, the AI research needs to include sensory input and output constantly feeding information back and forth to the controlling mechanism. This is where the backbone of our intelligence lies. The article in New Scientist in the link below, is about such an experiment, performed at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen UK. The team made a robot that mimicked the biological evolution and improving its movements based on its past experiences. The robot uses a neural network in order to improve the evolutionary process. The team thinks that the technique will help dev eloping more advanced service or humanoid robots.

Reference: www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126946.600-unnatural-selection-robots-start-to-evolve.html?full=true