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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.
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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"
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
I for one welcome our new Lego Mindstorm Overlords.
Or with "legos" as the rest of us call them.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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You need to revisit some coursework because selection doesn't care if it's "bad" or "good", just that it works. And if it works once it might work again, but it may lso be too haphazard and peter out in the long run.
Were that I say, pancakes?
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.
Here ya go....
http://www.altervistas.com/sites/weird/118/
Why does evolution always catch more attention when it is played out in the real world?
Because we've pretty much squashed whatever native talent most people have for abstract thought (or for appreciating the fruits of thought experiments). Never mind that people bank on the the output of weather sims every time they pack up to go skiiing - but anything that requires some extrapolation to the physical world is just too much for too many people these days. I truly, truly lay that at the feet of the "it takes a village" educators, who happily displace critical thinking and logic work with warmer and fuzzier aspects of Socialization. That being said, of course, this is entirely up to parents to counter, and that would work if so many of them weren't also handicapped by the same lack of work in that area. Ironically, it's possible that kids playing decent quality sim games may actually wind up better at getting this stuff when they grow up!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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
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