Evolved Virtual Creatures

[whughes]

http://www.karlsims.com/evolved-virtual-creatures.html

[whughes]

YouTube link, if you don't want to download the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCXzcPNsqGA

[scotth → whughes]

Firefox 3.5 supports Ogg right in the browser. Just click the link (for those using Firefox)

[amichail]

Now for the bad news: http://www.genetic-programming.com/patents.html

[fatdog789 → amichail]

Now for the good news: SCOTUS is taking a patent case and is expected to invalidate method patents within the next year or two (which is pretty much all of the ones listed).

EDIT: Now for the best news: Most of those patents are not American and could not be patented in America (b/c the US does not allow patents on algorithms).

[samlittlewood]

Classic work - the paper is well worth reading. A couple of highlights:

Using a fitness metric of 'distance travelled by CG', one solution was simply to build a very tall tower, and wait for it to fall over.

The evolved solutions would exploit bugs in the physical modelling - exploding the maths by moving two blocks very close together.

[rivo]

You can run the simulations on your computer as a screensaver: http://www.spiderland.org/screensaver