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."

Comments

My own experiment with GAs

[Sanity]

If you liked this you might also be interested in a recent experiment I did with genetic algorithms where I "evolved" creatures which could emulate an exclusive-or gate (ie. take two inputs, output 0 if they are the same and 1 if they are different).

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:

My first approach was simply to take the creature that performed best, and use it as the basis for the entire next generation, each of which contained random variations.

This approach was somewhat effective, although it tended to get stuck with a far from perfect solution, but where most small variation on that solution was worse (such as outputting 0.5 regardless of the input). This is known as getting stuck in a "local minima".

So I tried a different approach where we start out with completely random creatures for the first generation, as before, but instead of just taking the best and losing everything else, we take neighbours and "merge" them, where the better one forms 90% of the children's make-up, and the worse one the remaining 10%.

This had the effect of being much more resilliant against local minima as it gave more scope for the GA to try different options and where it found a good one, that may not be the best one, it kept it around for the next generation.

You can use other microcontrollers for Legos too.

[ron_ivi]

If you need a more powerful microcontroller for your legos, consider a GameBoy. Programmable in C or C++, has Sound and a color LCD display, and with a 32-bit RISC CPU, you can do far more with this than the current Mindstorm microcontroller.

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

Hmm.

[shoebert]

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.

"robots were created that could mate"

[tcopeland]

Don't anthropomorphize robots... they hate that.

Direct link to video

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

the obligatory addition of insult to injury

[SirSlud]

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.)

Robot creationists

[coffeecan]

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 ..."

Automatic design/manufacture of robots

[Jeffus]

Robots that evolve and fabricate themselves: http://helen.cs-i.brandeis.edu/golem/ The GOLEM project's been around for years.

Its closer than you think

[zappepcs]

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?

Skynet

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny that the story about evolving robots was submitted by John Conner.

Re:Evolution is a myth !

[SirSlud]

> women came later

If they were anything like my exgirlfriend, they came much, much later!

Evolving embodied agents with Genetic Algorithms

[gururise]

If you find the article interesting, you may want to take a look at some of the Reasearch I did for my Master's thesis. I created a virtual population of Embodied Agents that compete for resources (ala. survival of the fittest). My implementation of the Genetic Algorithm has a fitness selection routine that would optimize for the individuals with the best methods of locomotion.

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

In 2005, a milestone was reached

[Jugalator]

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.