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Mutating Animations

Posted by michael on from the learning-to-fly-but-i-ain't-got-wings dept.

Weird_one writes "Discover magazine's current issue has an intriguing article involving using genetic algorithims to evolve an animation of a walking individual."

4 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Its more difficult than one thinks... by arvindn · · Score: 5, Informative
    In simple textbook situations illustrating the genetic algorithm, we simply represent the solution space as a string of bits, and cut it at some point and recombine them to form offspring. However, real world applications are a lot more complex. That's because an arbitrary cut-n-paste of solution strings is likely to result, with extremely high probability, in an invalid string. This is the problem of having a sparse solution space. In this particular example, suppose you represent the figure as a sequence of pixels and try to apply a genetic algorithm on that representation. You'll never get anywhere, because most sequence of pixels are meaningless.

    What needs to be done to make the GA work is to develop a solution space representatin in which each parameter can be varied independently of the others. In this case:

    The character's body plan involved 700 distinct parameters that needed to be optimized to teach it how to walk like a human. .

    So its not like the computer learnt to walk by itself. There's a lot of hard work involved before you can even start the GA. Congrats to Reil.

    <shameless plug> On a slightly related note, I'm about to start implementing a GA to develop a killer AI for gtkboard . If you are interested in coding a GA, you are welcome to join :) (Of course it won't be anywhere as complex as the one in the article, but still lots of fun.)

  2. Chrichton: Prey by daedel · · Score: 4, Informative

    I just got finished reading this book, and had to chuckle at seeing this article. The book is about a group of nanomachines given agent based programming called PRED/PREY which uses something like the genetic programming spoken of in the article. Of course things go awry in there somewhere, but it is an interesting, and moderately technical fiction on this subject.

  3. Video Clips from Natural Motion by gopher_hunt · · Score: 5, Informative

    Heres the link to what they were talking about in the article. Walker Evolution

    This next one shows off a lot more of what they can do. Mainly they abuse their models.
    Natural Motion Show Real (14.5M Divx)
    I love the tennis ball in the crotch clip. Insert bob saget joke here.

  4. An incredibly fun example of this from 1997 by captainktainer · · Score: 4, Informative

    This freeware program from Jeffrey Ventrella is an open-ended version of this. Small wormlike creatures evolve to find the most efficient, fastest method of locomotion through liquid. You can change various parameters to make it easier or harder for the little swimmers.

    DarwinBots makes use of true genetic algorithms for propulsion, attack, feeding, social behavior, and evolution of multicellularity. I like Darwin Pond better, personally, because it's more stable and DarwinBots doesn't have the "cuteness" factor.

    Because these figures are engaging in human-type motion in a reasonably believable 3D environment, I can understand how it's important- however, it isn't truly revolutionary in nature. It's just another step in the evolution (appropriate, ne?) of genetic algorithms.