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Robots Modeled On Ancient Fish Help Researchers Study Origins of Extinct Species

Posted by Soulskill on from the just-stop-them-before-they-evolve-death-rays dept.

Hallie Siegel writes: Hypotheses about the evolution of traits in ancient species are difficult to test, as the animals have often been extinct for thousands or millions of years. In this article, researchers at Vassar College describe how a population of physical, free-swimming robots modeled after ancient fish evolved vertebrae under selection pressures for predator avoidance and foraging ability, showing how evolutionary robotics can be used to help biologists test hypotheses about extinct animals.

29 comments

  1. what's the point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    dead robots fossilized in sediment aren't going to do anything useful at all.

    1. Re: what's the point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      I share the same sediment.

    2. Re: what's the point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Clap... clap... clap....

    3. Re:what's the point? by kruach+aum · · Score: 1

      What's the sound of mustard?

      Just because you can arrange words grammatically in the form of a question doesn't mean you're actually asking anything sensible. Knowledge is valuable for knowledge's sake, even without a further use.

    4. Re: what's the point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We need to model robots after Bennett Haselton so we can further our civilization for the better

    5. Re:what's the point? by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      LOL ... you get a big giant whoosh ... do you really think someone is going to fossilize the robots in sentiment?

      And everyone knows the sound of mustard is yellow with a hint of zing.

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      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    6. Re:what's the point? by Oligonicella · · Score: 2

      You are incorrect, sir. It is a hint of ding.

  2. What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How the fuck does a robot evolve jack shit? Do they mean they had a software simulation or something? Every link just keeps breaking it down as "well, we have evolving robots, deal with it," and then moves on.

    1. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      How the fuck does a robot evolve jack shit? Do they mean they had a software simulation or something? Every link just keeps breaking it down as "well, we have evolving robots, deal with it," and then moves on.

      I recommend that you RTFA.

      BTW, you post qualifies as evolutionary selection pressure against mouth-breathing and drooling. Cuz you deserve to be bitch-slapped for culpable stupidity.

  3. Evolution random elements. by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We tend to think that each trait evolved was there for some sort or benefit. However a trait can happen just as long as it didn't create a significant hindrance.

    So if you take the normal bell curve. On the left side are traits that are harmful, on the right side you get traits that are helpful.

    Lets say 2 sigma to the left means the disadvantage is large enough to cause them to die before they can reproduce. So the disadvantages that are 1 sigma to the which are still harmful will pass on to the next generation then you got traits that fall on the average which are neutral. Over time you get on the average better, however not all traits have a use initially or ever.

    Lets use humans who have acne. There is no real advantage to it, it is slightly disfigurating so it could reduce your chances of mating, you can get wounds that cause infections... But that is so minor that passing the genes that cause acne over and over.
    Now lets say in a million year the acne had evolved over time that causes the skin to be thicker, and act as a form of armor. But right now it is just an inconvenience, or after a million years it can go away, or just still plague people.

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    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:Evolution random elements. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, although the parent overstates it, what they are talking about is Genetic Drift. We have mathematical "Laws" of evolution that predict how genetic drift (replacement of ancestral gene variants via mutation and random population genetics) will affect a population VS change via selective pressure. We can use these mathematical laws to predict things about an animals adaptive history, such as whether a trait is adaptive or occurred and was fixed in a population by chance. This can then be tested (and potentially falsified) by comparing predictions from DNA against the archaeological evidence.

    2. Re:Evolution random elements. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      You make a great point about trait evolution. In the research paper that we summarize, we take pains to distinguish three kinds of evolutionary products: adaptations, accidents, and by-products. Please take a look at the paper, if you have time and interest, so see how we set this up. Open access: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/frobt.2014.00012/abstract

    3. Re:Evolution random elements. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Sorry. I'm new to Slashdot. Didn't mean to be anonymous. This is John Long, Vassar College. Cheers.

    4. Re:Evolution random elements. by John+Long · · Score: 2

      This isn't quite how it works: "So if it's explained by selection pressure, it's evolution. If it's explained by lack of selection pressure, it's evolution. Go falsifiability!" It's not evolution itself that is being tested but rather the particular evolutionary mechanism. Most people assume that adaptation -- evolution by natural selection -- is the only way that evolution works. Not the case, as jellomizer points out correctly. So we test to see which, if any, of the different mechanisms are likely to be working. Since we are using robots, though, we can never say for certain what happened. We can only point to the more or the less probable.

    5. Re:Evolution random elements. by porksauce · · Score: 1

      Some traits have multiple effects, only some of which are beneficial. Like your acne example is possibly a side effect of oily skin which may have other evolutionary benefits. Large head size is a good example, giving capacity for greater intelligence at the cost of infants needing more care because they have to exit the womb earlier.

    6. Re:Evolution random elements. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Useful distinction. To be clear, I'm not arguing against evolution per se, but rather loose conceptual categorization that tends to persistently lead on the part of the general public to presuming one's conclusion, and reasoning that leads people to think seriously, rather than farcically, that notions equivalent to yawning as an evolved adaptation simultaneously supporting catching nutritious insects in one's mouth while reflexively also closing one's eyes to avoid the insects getting in them are "evidence" for their understanding of "evolution" that they've accepted a priori and second-hand, rather than scientifically.

  4. OMG! Another salvo in the arms race. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

    So the arms race between Jesus Fish vs Darwin Fish goes up by one notch now?

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    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:OMG! Another salvo in the arms race. by Empiric · · Score: 1

      Or, put less pictorially and more... Coptically...

      --
      ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
  5. Why do they use Robots? by goruka · · Score: 1

    The same as with this story: http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...

    I fail to understand why do they spend so much time using robots, while modern physics engines can do these kind of simulations infinitely more efficiently and at a fraction of the cost and time.

    1. Re:Why do they use Robots? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Heyo! This is Sonia Roberts, lead author on the publication.

      We used physical robots at Vassar and collaborated with groups at Lafayette College to create a physics engine-based computer simulation.

      It's a common misconception that writing some computer code is necessarily faster and less expensive than building robots. We got our robotic system up and running some preliminary experiments a couple of years before the computer simulation was finished. Flexible, composite solids bending in fluids are not easy to model to the degree of accuracy that we were looking for.

      It's also a good idea generally if you're making an argument based on biomechanics, as we were, to have some sort of physical model to check that your results did not arise from a discrepancy between your physics engine and real-world physics ...

    2. Re:Why do they use Robots? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's also a good idea generally if you're making an argument based on biomechanics, as we were, to have some sort of physical model to check that your results did not arise from a discrepancy between your physics engine and real-world physics ...

      This was my first thought, also. Rounding errors, coding and design errors, assumptions, and just plain old bugs can all have unexpected (and sometimes hilarious) results.

      Given the differing methods for modelling fluid mechanics, I can imagine that there would always be some trade-off in the accuracy thus changing the results.

    3. Re:Why do they use Robots? by TropicalCoder · · Score: 2

      I read the entire paper, thinking OMG, how much effort they went to building those toys! There is no way that would produce useful results, especially in just 10 generations. The model is simply too crude, and 10 generations is absurdly brief to expect useful results with this set up.

      I have spent years playing with genetic algorithms, and I have learned a great deal from them. You can never underestimate the effects of chance, and I found it takes thousands of generations to continuously break out of local maxima and move forward to achieve some substantial and interesting result.

      For example, for a long time I was obsessed with breading some "super being". I would run some population over tens of thousands of generations until one of my organsims achieved the highest score ever seen, and imagine I had achieved my dream of a super hero. Then later, the colony would start "de-evolving" (they always do, in the end), I would drop that organism back into the game with the same genes that scored so high, and find that its performance now was just mediocre. The problem is, that it seems half the time I am breeding for Luck, and that turns out not to be an inheritable trait :)

      Let me clarify that a bit: My experiments always involved organisms that wander around my computer screen looking for bits of food. There may be predators in some experiments, but mostly not because predators add so much turbulence. The organisms are in competition with each other, and those who score best go on to bread the next generation. I always employed small populations of 20 to 60 organisms, and a great variety of schemes in the design of their world and for dropping food into their world. During any given generation, some will score highly, and some will score poorly. Turns out, quite often this is just as much due to chance as it is to skill, and evolution goes sideways. Certainly over time I have had many "successes", however you might describe that, where organisms have developed certain traits exactly as you would expect or even exceeding expectation. However, in none of my experiments did I ever expect or observe some result in just 10 generations.

      I would suggest that an experiment in software could be developed that would shed more light on the evolution of vertebrate then your toys could ever show, and I suggest that it doesn't have to have a complex physics engine that takes many months to develop. Compared to how crude you little toy fish were, I would bet I could develop a useful simulation in a matter of days. It doesn't have to model the physics of water. In fact, the effectiveness of different numbers of vertebrae in your model could be measured empirically and the resulting data transferred to the program, etc... The feeding and prey avoidance can be far more simply and effectively modeled in software. In short, I just don't think building little toy fish is at all practical to answer the questions about evolution that you pose. However, it seems you have been well taught and have conducted very good work that will serve you well when you go on to research something more practical.

      If you are interested here is one of my neural network simulations that evolves via a genetic algorithm. They develop social behaviour - specifically, they learn to take turns: http://www.tropicalcoder.com/N...

      Experiments like this make me believe that "survival of the fittest" is an overly simplistic statement about the mechanisms of natural selection, and that you cannot isolate the individual from the group. More and more, I forget about my original dreams of creating super beings and think about evolution at the level of the species, rather than the individual.

  6. Mmm... by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    unprocessed fishsticks

  7. Yes, but do the robots have SystemD on them? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Certainly the robots would evolve a mechanism for removing this bloat.

  8. Acne (Re:Evolution random elements.) by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    If you work outdoors, like most of our ancestor did, you generally don't get acne. (One theory is that the sun's radiation kills the related bacteria, or at least co-produces chemicals that do.) Thus, acne is not a good example because it's mostly caused by modern living.

    Generally those who are more attractive, especially females, get more resources than the ugly, so acne genes probably would have been filtered away under normal circumstances.

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    Table-ized A.I.