Learning Autonomic Robots

Daath writes "The 27th of March, Professor Noel Sharkey et al starts a colony of living robots. 15 predators and 6 prey. It's an experiment in artificial evolution out of the Creative Robotics Unit at Magna. Here's a quote: 'The Living Robots have one goal, to obtain enough energy to survive and breed. The prey find their food from light sensors within the arena, while the predators feed off prey by stalking and chasing them before sucking away their power.' Magna has two articles, 'Predator and Prey Robots set up home at Magna' and 'Ground breaking Robotics experiment previewed'. "

Anthropomorphic droids

[Britney]

Apparently the prey and predators will be known affectionately as "dot.coms" and "venture capitalists" respectively.

Sounds like standard a Tech School environment

[spellcheckur]

15 "predators" and only 6 "prey."

The real problem is that, after the first week:

• two of the "prey" realize they're hot stuff and grow attitudes
• two of them put on the freshman 15
• and the other two lock themselves in their rooms studying because they're having troubles keeping up with the workload.

Yay

[NiftyNews]

So we're teaching robots to teach themselves the best and most effective ways to kill things. Man, that's a great idea. Thanks, scientists!

Soon to be overheard in the lab:...

[Mike Connell]

On a gallery overlooking the feeding pit ^H^H^H^H^H experiment lab...

TechA: "Aren't there meant to be 15 predators down there? I can only see 14"
TechB counts...
TechB: "Yeah, shit!", produces mobile, "I'll give Sharkey a ring..."
TechB, looking at mobile: "Batterys are dead. That's funny, I only charged them this morning..."

Insert dramatic exchange of glances and pause, followed by

AAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Chomp! Chomp!

TechA in feeble voice "Agh! Number fifteen really is a bagbiter [www.cnam.fr]
TechB: It's, erm, sucking away my power dude!

etc etc...

Can you Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?

[satanami69]

I don't even think the Discovery channel could get away with airing that kind of orgy.