- author = "Pablo Jose Funes",
- title = "Buildable Evolution",
- journal = "SIGEVOlution",
- year = "2007",
- volume = "2",
- number = "3",
- pages = "6--19",
- month = "Autumn",
- keywords = "genetic algorithms, genetic programming, LEGO",
-
URL = "
http://www.sigevolution.org/issues/pdf/SIGEVOlution200703.pdf",
- size = "14 pages",
-
abstract = "The most interesting results in Artifical Life come
about when some aspect of reality is captured. In the
mid-1990s, Karl Sims energised the AL community with
his ground-breaking work on evolved moving creatures
[28, 29]. The life-like behaviour of Sims' creatures
resulted from combining evolved morphology with a
physics simulation based on Featherstone's earlier work
[9].
The question that begged asking was: can a similar thing be done in the physical world? Can we make creatures that walk out of the computer screen and into the room?
Two components were required: a language to evolve morphologies that have real-world counterparts, and a way to build them -- either in simulation or by automated building and testing. We set out to demonstrate that buildable evolution was possible using a readily available, cheap building system -- Lego bricks -- and an ad-hoc physics simulation that allowed us to study the interaction of the object with the physical world in silico; with respect to gravitational forces at least. The result [10, 14, 12, 13, 15, 16, 25, 23, 26, 24, 27] is a system that can evolve a variety of different shapes and is very easy to use, set up and replicate.
Here I present an overview of the evolvable Lego structures project. Coinciding with the publication of this article, the source code is being released to the community (demo.cs.brandeis.edu/pr/buildable/source).",
-
notes = "Published April 2008.
Grammar, 2D and 3D, mutation and crossover, development, bloat, test and prune, network torque propagation, NTP, EvoCAD, MNFPs, linear programming solver, crane, long bridge, table.
homepage: http://www.icosystem.com DEMO lab Brandeis.",
