Artificial Life Forms Evolve Basic Memory, Strategy

Calopteryx notes a New Scientist piece on how digital organisms in a computer world called Avida replicate, mutate, and have evolved a rudimentary form of memory. Another example of evolution in a simulation lab is provided by reader Csiko: "An evolutionary algorithm was used to derive a control strategy for simulated robot soccer players. The results are interesting — after a few hundred generations, the robots learn to defend, pass, and score — amazing considering that there was no trainer in the system; the self-organizing differentiated behavior of the players emerged solely out of the evolutionary process."

Comments

Re:Addendum to first article is pretty good

[PietjeJantje]

Organisms can perfectly draw energy directly from the sun, and animals and humans still do (such as vitamine D production). The point is it wouldn't be energy efficient for a moving organism. A tree can grow huge, but a moving tree (the animal) couldn't. Surface, size, gravity, all that. Then it's much more efficient to get the contained energy from other organisms by eating them.

Re:Addendum to first article is pretty good

[PietjeJantje]

Meh, only idiot teenagers point out typing errors to foreigners like they are stupid.