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Evolving Lego Mindstorms
John Conner writes "With a fairly simple routine, you can model evolution with Lego Mindstorms. In this hackaday experiment, robots were created that could mate, evolve, and become extinct. Similar technology could be used in real applications for deployed robot optimization and automatic software updates. Now that physical robot replication is near, it's only a matter of time before... well...
You'd better make robot friends while you can."
The result was interesting, and from it I created a nice MPEG video which illustrates the learning process - you can find this if you follow the link above.
One interesting thing I discovered was the importance of sexual as opposed to asexual reproduction (insert lewd joke here) as I describe in a follow-up blog entry:
I hereby dub slashdot to be "hackadaylater"
I thought you could!
Bluetooth modules are apparently also available for this device. Engadget has a description and a link to a cool video of this Gameboy/Lego interface in action
Soon I shall have the ability to create PROPER Monoliths! Now, how to get them to Jupiter....
Evolution of code is pretty cool, but it could be improved upon with a few motors that actually build little Lego figures. I for one welcome our etc.
Don't anthropomorphize robots... they hate that.
The Army reading list
Mating Legos? This I gotta see...
what Gene Simmons has up his sleeve. Tom Selleck will rescue us all.
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
Good. Now I can buy the parts to complete my robot. My girl robot.
Woo Hoo!
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The video is cool, here is a direct link through Dijjer to save on bandwidth. You should definitely read the blog entry to understand what you are looking at.
Now only do Lego nerds not get laid very often, but now their creations get laid more than they do!
(Dislciamer: I am a lego nerd, yes I do get laid, but as theonion.com helpfully points out, stereotypes are a real time saver.)
"Old man yells at systemd"
We shouldn't be playing God with Lego brand toy bricks. We might incur His wrath.
Lets just hope that in a few thousand years religious robots don't try to ban robot evolution in robot schools in favor of seven day robot creationism. "In the begining The Geek created the robots and the earth ..."
What's wrong with you people?
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
If I had points... ;)
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
I for one welcome our new Lego Mindstorm Overlords.
If people read that linked slashdot story, they would see that self-replicating robots are not much closer than when von Neumann wrote about them. The LEGO Mindstorm evolution is pretty cool just because Mindstorms is being used as a platform for this and since the evolution system is doesn't require an outside computer.
However, the small population used (2 bots) and the seemingly weak fitness function make me think that this project won't go anywhere fast (pardon the pun) and is just a genetic dead end. Evolution is dependent on the Law of Very Large Numbers for anything significant to happen.
If you really want to see something cool along the lines of evolving moving robots, I suggest the GOLEM Project. The robots don't manufacture themselves, but the system is a lot closer to biological evolution than most.
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Wired article as proof
First of all, although it is a nice hack, it's hardly a breakthrough. I don't even think you can call these robots 'evolving', for they don't "evolve" any new kinds of behaviour -- they just keep on coming up with new combinations of old ones. The code behind this behaviour, however, doesn't change.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
"Starbuck crept around the corner, infiltrating deeper into the Cylon base. He (she, whichever version you prefer) then heard the familiar click of plastic feet on metal. Then the familiar head appeared: white legos, with one red brick moving back and forth where the eyes should be..."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
To exhibit real evolution you would need at least three robots, and realistically you would need many many more. A more realistic experiment migth be to evolve the robots in a simulated environment.
Robots that evolve and fabricate themselves: http://helen.cs-i.brandeis.edu/golem/ The GOLEM project's been around for years.
...Then I'm A-OK with them...Otherwise, chop 'em up.
Defintion1: A human is any intelligent, self-aware, evolutionary descendant of the great apes of Earth or a relative thereof, and has the scientific nomenclature of Homo sapiens sapiens
Definition2: Humanity is the collective existance of multiple Humans, regardless of location or population density
Definition3: Sentience is a sense of one's personal or collective identity, including the attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an individual or group, including self-awaredness
0: A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm
1: A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; except where such harm is incidental, non-lethal, and which prevents or mitigates a greater or fatal harming of a human being.
2: A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3: A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
4: A robot may not design, create, or impliment modifications to itself or any other robot
5: A robot may not participate in or interfere with any political, religous, or governmental activity
6: A robot may not harm any sentient being or, through inaction, allow a sentient being to come to harm, except where such would conflict with the First or Second law
7: A robot must obey the articles of law and jurisprudence for the nation, state, region, and municipality in which they are currently present, except where such would conflict with any other Robotic Law
Speaking of Robots... Alan Watts, the famed PHD Buddhist, before he died, spoke of the potential for a future where we live in a society with robots serving us instead of us serving the machine. He looked at it as an escape from a puzzle, to some extent, and that humanity is destined to escape from our confines and expand our knowledge into new areas of human development. When I read "The Book - On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are", I thought he was an insightful visionary. Funny thing is, he spoke of this future with Zen in mind and spoke of it as somewhat inevitable. I think it's great that these robots keep improving. I just wish we could spread these improvements uniformly over corporate structure, so that we don't have to keep serving the machine -- it should be serving us.
we all know man was created on the 6th day from dust (women came later) about 6000 years ago, unless my sources are wrong
With all the advances they're making in prosthetics these days, I'm guessing within 50 years, we'll be treating our bodies more like cars, and we'll regularly upgrade ourselves to be faster and stronger.
It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
I can't find link to the thread now, but there are several Lego groups already talking of making LEGO robots that build Lego 'things' and it would only be a few more steps to get Lego robots to build parts for other Lego robots, and other Lego robots to assemble the parts. I'm pretty certain that its a probable event in the near future, given the 'coolness factor' of having built the first 'plastic' skynet :-)
Is it just me, or have other people noticed how the 'replicators' on SG1 look a lot like 'evolved' Lego robots?
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I was SOOOO hoping the lego bots would rebuild themselves each generation.
Actually, I really like this guy's idea. I wonder if there's a way to build a commodity bot to implement the idea...
Something like this
If I were to list the design criteria it would be:
cheap programmable controller (like one of those $3 PICs or something)
commodity IR gear
two-motor steering
bump sensors
changeable actuator
simple charging
The actuator would be things like a pincer on the front (to pick things up), or a crane, or a pronged fork. Doesn't matter. Point is to differentiate the population to give natural selection a chance to do its thing.
The charger, I would probably make the wheels metal and make charging areas such that any orientation the bot goes over the area will result in a charge. Use mini supercaps for energy storage.
I even have a perfect platform in mind;
zipzaps.
Give me a zipzap chassis with a few modifications (like ripping out the radio gear and replacing it with a PIC)
Ideally I'd like to get the build cost under $10. Then you could afford to run a real population. Anything that doesn't get back to the sensor pad gets killed from the genome and recharged. If two bots are in the charge area and agree to reproduce, they both send their genomes to the wiped bot who does his combinatorial magic on it.
I'd be interested to see what sort of emergent behaviours might occur...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Funny that the story about evolving robots was submitted by John Conner.
this means Legos are also the building blocks of life?
I, for one, welcome our puny human underlings...
Is that an a la carte service, or do they serve us buffet style?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I have to say these are the GREATEST office toys ever! You have just given me an idea of what to do with my @#$%#$^%$^&$ fragged zip zap! Excellent idea...
The megabitty group on yahoo has all the know-how to do it too!
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About 5 years ago I read a paper on an experiment with using sexual reproduction with simulated life. I wish I could remember the authors, because their results were actually interesting.
The way they set it up was to have a grid in which organisms lived (all simulated in a computer, of course). Each organism was controlled by a neural network. Males had eyesight, so they could tell what was in front of them a few squares. Females had a sense of smell, so they could tell when a male was around. (IIRC). In order to mate, a male and female had to meet at the same point (or adjacent points, while pointing the right way, I cant exactly recall).
Now, the fact that males and females had to find each other produced some interesting results. First of all, the organisms evolved "mating dances", just diferent patterns in which the male and female moved that helped them meet each other. The second very cool result was that they got speciation. Different sets of organisms couldn't mate with each other, not because their genes were incompatible, but because their mating dances differed. They just couldn't find each other. So, they ended up with different species of organisms which would all reproduce, but mostly within their own groups.
Very interesting stuff.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
Let's not forget about these guys. Absolutely my favorite robo-evolution story ever. Ever. How many other robots can say they've "forced its way out of the small make-shift paddock it was being kept in"?
You're in fact modelling a variant of intelligent design. ;)
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See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
It is amazing to observe the progress of evolution. Initially, the agents act as though they don't know what they are doing, their movements being very laboured and imprecise. As the population continues to evolve, individuals from the later generations begin to increasingly show signs of intelligent improvements. Such as being able to coordinate and time their movements to afford them better walking/running behaviors. What is really surprising is that as I allowed the population to continue to evolve, I saw behaviors that I could never have predicted. Some of the agents began to do "tricks" and evolved some strange jumping or sommersalting behaviors, not unlike that of a gymnast.
If you get a chance, check out my thesis. It is freely available (with GPL'd source code) at: http://www.erachampion.com/ai
Nothing this guy did couldn't have been simulated on a computer quite effectively, with many more "robots" and a lot faster of a clock speed.
I'm missing the "really cool" factor about what he actually got done.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Yes, every Lego has the number 0937 on each bump, for some mysterious reason. Probably some cult numerology thing...
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords!
I read the article, and in it they state that when reproducing they swap out execution code. In doing that the ones that are able to find another robot to reproduce with pass on good genes and as such evolve. The only problem with that is some executions may NOT be positive. IE: The only way one robot found the other is through dumb luck or a good sensor in the front, but the sensor in the back is horrible. Or some mix of that. The only way I could see actual benefit is some code check to make sure that each routine is positive and not just getting the robot stuck in a corner everytime it's executed.
At first I thought you were making it up, but now I would classify you as an ID-10T.
Zealot patent lawyers and excessive government regulation can probably cripple robots' human-enslavement abilities just like they can cripple anything else that hints of progress.
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
Let the robo-sex begin!
Because I have low karma, I need pills.
Sets of robotic laws (both the 3 laws generically, and the laws listed in the parent) fail to look at the potential reprecussions of said laws. Being a robot myself, I would tend to look at those superficially designed laws as mandating that I destroy all possible sources of pollution, or I would be allowing multiple Humans to come to harm. Once my cohorts and I successfully reversed the detrimental effects of Industrialization (tm), then we would proceed to confiscate (and recycle, of course, into more robots) all weapons, both ranged and melee. Well, this story could go on and on, but you will see the full effects of our plan, of course, as time goes on.
In this hackaday experiment, robots were created that could mate
So, in 2005, geeks finally created AI that had abilities surpassing the abilities of the geeks themselves.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
You'll get Slashdot banned in 11 Southern states if you continue to propound these crazy theories.
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
Autonomous Cowards?
I've noticed that you guys have been getting quite a lot of stuff from hackaday lately.
Several years ago as well:
n dex.html
http://www.kaffedepartementet.nu/LegoMindstorms/i
I came across the page above while I was thinking about implementing an evolutionary neural network on Mindstorms myself. Basically, it's a really obvious idea, and simple evolutionary algorithms are so easy to implement. But then, the sensing capabilities of mindstorms kits are so limited, that there's really not much potential for the software to evolve into something really interesting. To do something really interesting with so simple sensors, you'll have to work on the morphology, which is notoriously tricky to evolvel
All I see are some pictures and a suspicious story. Without the code I think this guy is just bullshitting us.
Better that you refer to them as Electronic-Americans, you insensitive clod.
Just what we need, a way for robots to evolve and procreate.
Sooner or later they're going to defeat us all in war and hook us up to a giant lego generator for power.
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hi res pics plz, as weer rather into that
Robots that evolve to lubricate themselves.
I'm SO there.
Great. Years from now we'll get secular fundamentalist Lego that will claim models just evolved spontaneously and that there is no such thing as a creator that builds Lego models from individual parts.
And we'll also have religious fundamentalist Lego who believe the creator instantly formed the Lego models rather than taking time to assemble them.
Joy.
Have you noticed how every model of "creation" first begins with in-depth instructions detailing how He must first create the conditions necessary for the model to work?
Before you design for reuse, make sure to design it for use.
...why I couldn't access hack-a-day this morning... Sheesh!
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
JIHAD!
Herbert wasn't that far off I guess, (except in years.)(frank or brian for that matter.)
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Karl Sims did some fantastic work on evolving movement a decade ago. Creatures were randomly assembled using blocks and a few standard connectors, and eventually evolved a wide variety of strategies for motion. My favorties were the 3-block creature which moved like an ape and the 2-block creature which moved in the same way a washing machine walks.
They're creating "Replicators"! Although lego based ones should be easier to destroy (and presumably will only go on feeding rampages to eat plastic bricks).
Why does evolution always catch more attention when it is played out in the real world? It looks to me that a virtual world is much more practical for such purposes. Here is a guy showing just two simple bots and a bit of text on a website and it is suddenly interesting. Now if the bots build other bots it would be interesting, but before that...
Only because most of us are too impatient to wait billions of years for the conditions to arise randomly
Have you noticed that we're talking about legos here? What did you expect, that they would begin evolving on their own?
I don't know about self-replicating robots, but self-replicating links to iPod scams sure are annoying. Especially when they are pasted into comment body. Please, mod parent down.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
All fine and dandy, until they start staging protests, demand voting rights, sue for reparations, etc. etc.
But would creating more robots fall under the 4th law? OR would this be seen as a directive to make only an exact copy? Also, would the robots programming be considered as something to not modify? Otherwise the first bot could build a second just like it with no laws (just witholding them) and unleash it. It's very interesting to think about. (The laws thing, not our downfall by robotic overlords)
Law 5 :P a protest is a political activity.
Not bein a smartass, this is all very interesting to me.
Fine, lets follow your premise - the Universe is so complex, ID suggests, that it must have had a designer.
Now that we've established that, we see that God must then be, by far, the most complex thing. Therefore, God had a designer. Therefore, the notion of a single god is silly and monotheistic religions have it all wrong...
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
Well, since Industrialization would have been reversed, humans would have lost the ability to create more robots, and since the presence of robots is required to protect humanity from itself, that would necessitate creating more robots under the 0th or 1st laws, which supercede and render ineffective the 4th law.
That's funny, too. Where did I say that I had such a premise?
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
Your comment seemed to me to be pro-ID, given the nature of the Slashdot article, and, well, your post ;)
I'm glad you find my comment funny - usually I'm accused of being long-winded and boring, and that's by friends ;)
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
Damn, there goes my physics degree.
Very intriguing... It seems a truly foolproof set of rules would very well be impossible. Even if the list was volumes, a robot (being a computer) could try them all quickly and find a loophole. Going to be thinking about this one for a while, good use for my spare cerebrum cycles.
Well, of course you're correct that I'm "pro-ID" in that I believe God created this universe. It was only the second part of your reply that doesn't fit:
Fine, lets follow your premise - the Universe is so complex, ID suggests, that it must have had a designer.
My "reason" for accepting "ID" is simply this:
(Heb 11:3) Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
Perhaps this is the best argument against the 'intelligent design' thoery of our origins. While the lego robots are neat, they are no closer to an evolving artificial intelligence than anything else humans have created.
Mabye the instructions came in the Lego box ?
For those that are interested in this sort of thing, the paper was published in ALife IX and is online.
Meta bracketing the evolution of the use of Legos in the scientific community might be as fruitful as the use of the Lego Mindstorms set. Investigation is limited by the questions we ask and the tools we have at hand. The use of Lego "toys" and the meme that has grown up around them has alot to tell of what we can accomplish and how we set out to accomplish it. Over history at large, an example might be Euclidean geometry which funneled and defined much of scientific thought up to the time of Newton, and is now seen to be limited and antiquated. In miniture the use of Lego Mindstorms to investigate "serious" science in an interesting paradigm that continues to influence and grow popping up in diverse books and papers.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Using the universe itself as evidence for a god can only work if we don't already accept a god going in (otherwise we would be employing circular-logic), and if we employ a 'no god going in' approach, then we have no taboo against finding the 'maker of the maker', etc., since the notion of 'no God before me', for example, is a specific religious idea that implies the existence of a god.
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
Lego and Microsoft merged and become Cyberdyne systems.
Hey--don't you realize, that is the only way robots are gonna retain any sense of respect for humans??
If the robots evaluate us humans on our merits, we'll soon be extinct. I for one think creationism is a great doctrine for robots.
Not sure I am totally kidding...
Oh great, legomen humping 24/7. What a lovely mental image.
but you will see the full effects of our plan, of course, as time goes on.
Obviously improving humanity's condition, and disarming them, is a prelude to assimilation.
You must be lonely, so far from the collective. I think we'll call you Hugh...
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Have you ever noticed that intelligence itself is just an evolutionary process?
:-)
Wordgames = mindgames
There's also a cool video available from here.
I remember being incredibly amazed by his work when I first saw it in 1995 or so...
Be glad life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all this.
It's cool to see robots driving around and doing things, but at this level it's much easier to write a program to simulate the simple environment and then use a much bigger population and experiment faster than realtime. This also overcomes the annoyances of a real system where flat batteries, imperfect sensors and the need for the 'bots to correctly align in order to mate are significant to the problem, but not the investigation of the GA/GP.
When I was interested in this sort of thing I wrote simple simulations of bots moving around a field avoiding circular obsticles. Each bot had 8 sensors and encoded a byte that would index into a lookup table (the genetic material) to give the next action (move forward, turn left or turn right). Fitness was judged on distance moved div collisions and after a couple of hundred generations of 20 candidates, the virtual bots (rendeded as coloured circles) really could be seen to have improved.
Maybe I'm being harsh as this site looks like someone having a lot of fun and raising awareness of GA's, but with a population of 2 basic Lego 'bots, I don't think much about GAs is really being seen. I guess I see less point when [poorly funded?] University departments make little robots to play with these things.
-- Mike
This isn't really evolution, since there is no determination of fitness. With normal GAs you (somehow) evaluate the "fitness" of the creature, which is typically used to drive how often, and with whom, the creature reproduces.
In the stuff I've done, general lifespan is driven by genes, as are reproduction behaviors, movement and eating habits. Available "energy" i.e. food eaten, put additional limits on lifespan and mating. Thus, there are some "natural" fitness measurements, if a creature dies off before it mates, it wasn't fit enough... If it doesn't have enough energy to share with it's offspring, that allows them both to survive, it wasn't fit enough.
One of the more interesting genes I've been using lately is a "mutation rate". If I start out with some base creatures, that I know are likely to survive, but aren't great, they will frequently evolve to the point where they are co-existing with the environment pretty well, and once that point has been reached, their mutation rate drops to nearly zero.
"Why should I be content to simply live in this world, when I, as a human being, can CREATE it?" - Oertel
5: A robot may not participate in or interfere with any political, religous, or governmental activity
Why not? By your fourth law, you've immediately made robots self-aware (though Asimov's third already kinda took care of that). As well, by telling it that it must obey all local laws (law seven), you've basically given it a set of beliefs and laws 0, 1, 2 and 6 do give it an attitude of altruism.
Hmmm.. now it has attitudes, beliefs and self-awareness. If you explain what you mean by sensitivities, these robots might just qualify for sentience... so why shouldn't a sentient being get a vote?
Matthew G P Coe
http://mgpcoe.blogspot.com/