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'. "

Artificial Life

[MoobY]

If you want to know more about artificial living creatures (either robots, within computers or art, ...), visit Artificial Life Online [alife.org].

Re:Living Robots?

[Atrahasis]

Have you read both articles? The robits breed by uploading their "genes" (control strategies) to a central computer. If they survive past a certain age, then all of the surviving robots get paired off randomly, and their control strategies are randomly mixed, with an added random mutation. The new generation of robots is then assigned new control regimes from those generated. Its a study in evolutionary behaviour, and not physical change.

Is anybody else a little bit wary of the third evolution thread in a few days?

Re:Only behavioural evolution

[Atrahasis]

Replication is going on - read both articles.

Re:Viable population?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that one of the traits Noel is hoping will emerge is hunting in packs - he admits that if this happens it will take a very long time to learn, but this may explain the large number of predators.

Related idea, here [utexas.edu] is a paper by a guy who evolved neural-network controllers for a simulator to do just that. (Look at the bottom one in the list.)

Way to go, Slashdot Rocket Scientists.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen about 20 posts now saying "duuuh, not enough prey, too many predators."

Just like in real life, this is a FOOD chain. On a food chain, there are some animals that are prey AND predator.

Example: My cat eats mice. It is a predator in that regard. A fox would eat my cat. In that case, my cat would be prey.

The robots in this called "prey" are ones that can ONLY feed off the light trees. Some predators feed on them. Other predators feed off those predators, and so on.

Bunch of freakin' rocket scientists! ;P

Re:Why not simulations?

[mikerich]

What's not been made clear is that MAGNA is a science museum with lots of hands-on exhibits. Physical robots are much more attractive to visitors than a simulation.

Perhaps one of the kids watching the robots zoom around will take some interest in AI and go on to do something more useful.

Best wishes,
Mike.

good laymen book

[aCapitalist]

For those who are interested, check out the book "Artificial Life". It's not heavy on the tech, but is interesting, and is good on the history of artificial life type stuff. I forget who the author is.

Re:Some other interesting work

[quantaman]

Sorry, I was rushed last time and didn't get a chance to get the link working here's [hotwired.com] a link to some wired interviews (I coudn't link directly to one) and here's [beam-online.com] some pics of the actual robots.