It isn't so important, but a happy coincidence that I am a robotic software engineer. The project itself, is pretty straightforward initially, then you introduce the genetic algorithm element. Now, I do have experience genetic algorithms, my final year thesis was in grammatical evolution. I previously worked in ESA on genetic algorithm toolkit (PaGMO), that used cross-breeding with archipelagos, and one use case was fuel conservation in planetary robotics.
I also work in nothing but Ubuntu.