
Bizarre Soft Robots Evolve to Run - eguizzo
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-software/bizarre-soft-robots-evolve-to-run#.UWcC2Fw0i00.hackernews
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pepsi_can
I'm reminded of BoxCar2D where a vehicle is evolved to traverse a treacherous
terrain: <http://boxcar2d.com/>

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alan_cx
Oh dear............ I think I have just found a way to waste a hell of a lot
of time. :)

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epidemian
Me too. I was so excited to see some of the best "cars" survive and get better
while the rubbish ones were being displaced.

Great program overall; i wish it was open source :(

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gavanwoolery
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HauN98naZ9U#t=13s)

Natural Motion has been working in a similar area for a while. I think they
rely less on genetic algorithms and more on explicit behavior and physical
reactions though.

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codeulike
Brings to mind Greg Egan's short story "Crystal Nights", in which a tech
billionaire works out that the best way to create a singularity-type AI is to
evolve one rather than try to design one. He sets up a virtual world inside a
(conveniently powerful) supercomputer, starts with very basic organisms, and
then manipulates the environment to encourage evolution in the directions he
wants. Things don't quite go as expected. Well worth reading.

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martinkallstrom
Link for the curious: <http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-egan/>

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karl_gluck
My first thought was "this is really familiar"... then I realized it's because
I used to work in Hod's lab :)

I think it's interesting that most of the robots that evolved don't have rigid
components. I wonder if reducing the structural support of the "muscles"
themselves would favor robots with a defined skeleton.

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fferen
I thought that at first too, but then I thought maybe most of the support is
inside, not visible.

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kjmitch
It's surprising how much I've learned about evolution just as a natural
phenomenon since I started learning about computational evolution and genetic
algorithms. It's a fascinating field with applications I find very exciting,
and lots of research to be done.

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bemmu
This is what I was going for with my Flash game "Darwin Games":
<http://www.kongregate.com/games/Bemmu/darwin-games-2012>

The idea to use just four types of blocks is brilliant. I tried using only
bone blocks, with invisible muscle fibers connecting them to each other and
pulsating at random pace. Wasn't so easy to visualize.

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lifeformed
>> And in the greater scheme of things, 1,000 generations is not a whole lot:
in human terms, that's only 25,000 years, while modern Homo Sapiens have been
around for ten times as long.

That's a bit misleading. 1,000 generations to evolve extremely basic movement
is nowhere near comparable to the complexity of the human body.

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DavidSJ
Most of the complexity of the human body (including its locomotive facilities)
evolved well before humans existed. I think the analogy is just to put the
time scales in perspective, not to equate their products.

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rasur
Reminds me of Karl Sims' Evolved Virtual Creatures work, except moved to
physical reality.

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mkl
And he did it in _1994_ : <http://www.karlsims.com/evolved-virtual-
creatures.html>

There was also earlier work, e.g. Witkin and Kass, Spacetime Constraints,
1988, but I don't think I've ever seen a video.

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3dptz
I remember being dumbstruck after watching that video for the first time and
realizing the power of programming. Karl Sims website still looks a bit like
it did back then <http://www.karlsims.com>

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lazyjones
The effect of the moving building blocks (expansion, contraction) is
apparently not triggered synchronously. What determines what order these
actions trigger in? It looks like this plays an important role in actually
getting these to move...

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zellyn
It would be fascinating to give these creatures a very simple, evolvable
nervous system: for example, a table where rows are timesteps, columns are
cubes, and the cell contents are expand/contract/nothing: sort of like the old
MOD trackers.

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karl_gluck
Viktor Zykov (one of Hod's grad students) did something like this in 2006
[1][2]. He built a "starfish" then had it learn its own shape through
experimentation, then evolve a way to move.

[1] Video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msw267lisow> [2] Info:
<http://creativemachines.cornell.edu/emergent_self_models>

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ColinWright
The one at 1:45 that jumps up and clicks its heels every now and again is my
favorite.

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PavlovsCat
I like this one more: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUXc6mckGLE>

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hcarvalhoalves
We need more of that. This kind of experiment shows how natural evolution
works, even though it's not an intuitive idea.

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cristianpascu
I don't think it really shows that. By its nature, software programmed
evolution is intelligence guided evolution. Even though it's left alone, the
rules built into the software already contain the seeds for the possible
outcome. PLUS, a big plus, the selection rules. This is intelligent evolutive
design. It's not mere evolution through random mutations and natural
selection.

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pekk
Darwin's reason for using the phrase "natural selection" was to draw an
important analogy with "artificial selection" as is done by pigeon-breeders.

It is clear that the intelligence of the breeder does not somehow directly
reshape the pigeon. Rather, the way the breeder expresses his preferences is
to SELECT the traits he is looking for. The only understanding required to see
how this works in the case of natural selection is to see that nature
analogously 'selects' some things over others, without intelligence on
nature's part. In other words, the breeder is a "fitness landscape" for his
captive pigeons. The natural fitness landscape may not choose the same things
as a pigeon fancier would, but it does 'choose' some things like traits
involved in surviving to breeding age, attracting mates, having sufficiently
many healthy children, etc. Although it is natural, it is still selection.

This is not "intelligent evolutive design" just because a human being is
involved in the experiment. Evolution is evolution and other members of the
same species, or even members of other species, are part of the natural
environment imposing selection pressure.

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dougk16
This brings up a metaphysical point of whether humans really play a natural
part in the evolutionary process anymore. For example, when mankind wipes out
another species, in some sense you can say this is "natural", since evolution
made us in the first place, and we're just doing what we do. In another sense,
you can say we're assholes.

Personally, I do see a line being drawn, starting a few thousands year ago and
coming to a head now with bio-engineering and robotics, etc., where human-
level intelligence represents the next major stage in how matter is organized
over time. First was the stellar life-cycle, then biological evolution, and
now we're joining the party. If you view it this way, I don't believe we can
say that we're part of the natural environment anymore.

Sorry, didn't mean to get all abstract...it's all physics anyway.

