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Genetic algo's are a great thing to do at home. I've been tinkering with Avida for the last few days, trying to get these programs to grow instead of shrink. Maybe they will gain some kind of structures then.

http://devolab.cse.msu.edu/

See also

http://www.framsticks.com/
http://www.stellaralchemy.com/lee/virtual_creatures.html
http://www.spiderland.org/

Any of which are fun if you get them going. The joy in these things is sort of in tuning them. But I think a lot lately about GA's on GA's to adjust the parameters within certain windows. A lot of these models aren't open-ended enough to demonstrate intelligence. But you never know. Check out Polyworld, Achilles, and Critterding, too, if you're in Linux

Well once you have read a bit and want to play, may I suggest you look into Breve for your experimenting. Think of it as your AI simulation Expert Lego set. Lots of tools to visualize your algorithms. Cheers.

As a matter of fact, my screensaver actually implements a kind of evolution by selection algorithm. You can obviously believe in whatever you want but, please, don't say that we evolutionists are not correct. At least not until you have proof that we aren't.

The video has parts (the simulated ones) which look a heck of a lot like the cool and open source breve AI simulation environment ( http://www.spiderland.org/ ) which does pretty much the exact same thing. Check out the brevewalker or brevecreatures.

The video is still extra-impressive though, as the robot uses sensors to detect it's own shape and limitations, and then (it looks like) loads it into breve where the thinking seems to happen. Pretty cool indeed.

It depends on how sophisticated you want their formation flying to be. If the rules are A) Stay together, B) Don't crash into anything, and C) Seek some goal, simple emergent behavior can do remarkablly well. Craig Reynolds' Boids algorithm, developed in 1986, is an amazingly simple way to do it.

I'm not saying that flocking in the real world, even in "empty" space, isn't a remarkable challenge, but there are sometimes simple ways to create compex coordination. Marco Dorigo's ant colony optimization routines are another example.

I'm fascinated by this stuff. Jon Klein's open-source Breve simulation environment downloads with some great examples, and it's a great platform for wiring your own.

I think that saying such a thing is only a way to dismiss the seriousness of the situation. If you look at things in a specific way, and only at things that can confirm that point of view, yes, science can be seen as a religion. The thing is, science isn't just about theories. There are theorems, axioms, postulates, experiments, demonstrations, hypothesis, proofs, analysis, etc... Science isn't about faith. Theories themselves aren't about faith. They're probabilities, and are there to be challenged by the scientific community to be confirmed or invalidated. And theories never come out of the blue : according to what we currently know, they are more or less probable, and compatible with what we hold for scientific facts. Things are always at least double-checked. The evolution theory has been challenged just as well, and still stands today. It is backed by facts and evidences, and evolution in itself has been used practically to improve technology : robots move optimally thanks to generations of computer programs born randomly, breeded, and selected, just like in nature and according to Darwin's theory. The same applies for artificial life, see this for instance : http://www.spiderland.org/breve/

I know that in science sometimes what we held for true yesterday can be wrong tomorrow. For instance the earth was believed to be flat before... But by then science had nothing in common with today's science, and furthermore, that theory was based on faith, just like the intelligent design "theory" is nowadays... which is precisely why such theory is unworthy of our era. And I think that moving the subject onto science is just a spin.

So basically the intelligent design "theory" tells us that the earth is 6000 years old, and that all living things were created at once (well maybe not at once, I guess it should rather be in 6 days?...) What's next? Will they put the Earth back in the center of the universe, with all other celestial objects rotating around it?...

You know I'm perfectly OK with creationism as a religious belief. I just can't stand to see that some try to disguise that as a scientific theory. What facts led to the creation of such theory? What scientific mind wrote a thesis about it? Is there even one? And if there is, will those who support such a view ask the Nobel prize for him? Isn't it troubling to see that this theory has been written nearly word for word in the Bible even before the birth of science as we know it? Is there a scientific collegiate that supports this theory and is working on it? Why is it that those who support this so-called theory do it on a religious basis and not on actual scientific facts? Isn't it worrysome that secularism has to undego such heavy fire, when lobbies put the pressure on schools to make sure that something which has nothing to do there is being taught? Where's the respect for other beliefs? Where's the respect for those who do not believe in God?

There's a decentralized simulator called Breve that includes a module called Gatherers that will demonstrate the behavior of the U-Bots. There's a few other canned demos, or you can write your own. Lots of eye candy.

Runs on Linux, OS X, and Windows.

Make a wrapper program to create the playing field, instantiate as many 'agents' as you see fit, and let them loose. Tweak, rinse, repeat.

Better yet, use a simulation environment like breve and you get 3d rendering, collision detection, basic physics, and a lot more for free.

• "In the aptly named Creature Evolver I attempted to reproduce a project originally conceived by Karl Sims, but which at the time that Sims implemented it required an expensive super computer. My goal was not necessarily to improve on Sims' work, at least not in the first iteration, but merely to demonstrate that it is possible to evolve novel physical morphologies and accompanying neural control in a three dimensional world with an accurate underlying physics. Ideally, I would like to explore the possibility of entire ecosystems of physically simulated organisms. At present it is only barely possible to evolve a single organism in a reasonable period of time however."

Algorithmic music? Try this kind of thing yourself. (Mac OS X).

~jeff

I'd have to say that breve:

http://www.spiderland.org/breve/

is one of the coolest scientific apps out for OS X right now. It takes some time to wrap your head around it, but with a little work, you can be writing your own 3D OpenGL simulations...!

~jeff

If you are lucky enough to be running OS X, you may want to check out Breve, a 3d simulation environment designed for the simulation of decentralized systems and artificial life. It's like StarLogo in many respects, but it also has a simulator of real-world physics that gives you things like gravity and the like. The language is object-oriented and very easy.

i really dig the idea of genetic "learning" simulations. they start with nothing, and eventually can come up with all the same things animals do - including different gaits for walking and running, etc.

this is especially cool, in that they've not only done this in a simulation, but with a real nuts and bolts 'bot. how easy it seems to me now to ship out robots with very little programming, but a quick learning curve. the owner puts the 'bot in its home, punches in a few things it would like the bot to do, and lets it explore a little. after some training, it's perfectly suited to its new job and new environment...

oh yeah. i grabbed a screensaver a while back from this guy that simulates a simple creature learning to walk. pretty spiffy, and you don't have to worry about it ambling off to the parking lot...