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