abstract = "Biological life is in control of its own means of
reproduction, which generally involves complex,
autocatalysing chemical reactions. But this autonomy of
design and manufacture has not yet been realized
artificially. Robots are still laboriously designed and
constructed by teams of human engineers, usually at
considerable expense. Few robots are available because
these costs must be absorbed through mass production,
which is justified only for toys, weapons and
industrial systems such as automatic teller machines.
Here we report the results of a combined computational
and experimental approach in which simple
electromechanical systems are evolved through
simulations from basic building blocks (bars, actuators
and artificial neurons); the 'fittest' machines
(defined by their locomotive ability) are then
fabricated robotically using rapid manufacturing
technology. We thus achieve autonomy of design and
construction using evolution in a 'limited universe'
physical simulation coupled to automatic fabrication.",
notes = "Note I have filed as GP even though the authors state
they are not using GP (their genetic search uses only
mutation) however (as far as I can tell) the
representation of the genome is variable length.
Nice mpeg videos online at
https://www.nature.com/articles/35023115",