Genetic Algorithm Fun
So I was watching this genetic algorithm thingie I saw on Boing Boing. It's pretty cool. Then the Boing Boing comment thread pointed me to the original Reddit thread for the app. I saw an amusing comment there from ThisIsDave:
Are you familiar with Hod Lipson's work? He does a lot of the same things at Cornell.
Extraordinarily cool.
Edit
A few cool anecdotes from Lipson's talk:
1) One of his robots evolved to be extremely tall and just fall over after it was created. The way fitness was scored, this counted as going an extremely long horizontal distance, so it was highly favored.
2) Another robot found an error in their physics code and learned how to fly in their simulations.
3) Another one started vibrating really fast, generated a divide by zero error, and thus got infinite fitness because it "traveled" infinitely far.
I just think those anecdotes are pretty awesome!
Are you familiar with Hod Lipson's work? He does a lot of the same things at Cornell.
Extraordinarily cool.
Edit
A few cool anecdotes from Lipson's talk:
1) One of his robots evolved to be extremely tall and just fall over after it was created. The way fitness was scored, this counted as going an extremely long horizontal distance, so it was highly favored.
2) Another robot found an error in their physics code and learned how to fly in their simulations.
3) Another one started vibrating really fast, generated a divide by zero error, and thus got infinite fitness because it "traveled" infinitely far.
I just think those anecdotes are pretty awesome!