Excerpt:
...A population of several hundred creatures is created within a supercomputer, and each creature is tested for their ability to perform a given task, such the ability to swim in a simulated water environment. The successful survive, and their virtual genes containing coded instructions for their growth, are copied, combined, and mutated to make offspring for a new population...
...A population of several hundred creatures is created within a supercomputer, and each creature is tested for their ability to perform a given task, such the ability to swim in a simulated water environment. The successful survive, and their virtual genes containing coded instructions for their growth, are copied, combined, and mutated to make offspring for a new population...
Bob's post reminded me on some artificial life sites I discovered a while back....
It's sort of unclear from the animation exactly what is going on. The narrator mentions contact sensors but there's no visual indication of that in the models. They must have some sensors though since they follow the red dot and the green cube. It would be nice if the models reflected a little bit more than their gross shape so we could see joints, sensors, and things like that.
The idea of evolving creatures in a computer is really cool though, and I'm impressed that they were able to come up with such a variety of successful shapes.