Evolving Robots Learn To Prey On Each Other 115
quaith writes "Dario Floreano and Laurent Keller report in PLoS ONE how their robots were able to rapidly evolve complex behaviors such as collision-free movement, homing, predator versus prey strategies, cooperation, and even altruism. A hundred generations of selection controlled by a simple neural network were sufficient to allow robots to evolve these behaviors. Their robots initially exhibited completely uncoordinated behavior, but as they evolved, the robots were able to orientate, escape predators, and even cooperate. The authors point out that this confirms a proposal by Alan Turing who suggested in the 1950s that building machines capable of adaptation and learning would be too difficult for a human designer and could instead be done using an evolutionary process. The robots aren't yet ready to compete in Robot Wars, but they're still pretty impressive."
A preemptive (Score:5, Funny)
What could possibly go wrong?!
And then they'll develop religion... (Score:3, Funny)
And those who aren't saved go to robot hell, and must play the fiddle and beat the robot devil in order to leave.
Re:Evolution (Score:3, Funny)
actually, as of now, these robots are just programs in a physics computer experiment... so if they were to evolve to be smart, we'd have a computer virus instead of an actual robot that is evolving. I wonder, if a robot program like this were let loose on the internet, and was capable of learning... what would it learn?
God help us if it decides 4chan and goatse are the 'norm'.
Re:Evolution (Score:1, Funny)
I wonder, if a robot program like this were let loose on the internet, and was capable of learning... what would it learn?
To get first posts of course. All those failed first posts you see are generations 1 to 100. Any decade now we'll get one that works.
Re:Evolution (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder, if a robot program like this were let loose on the internet, and was capable of learning... what would it learn?
Asimov's rule 34?
Re:And I predict (Score:5, Funny)
Re:paper was in PLoS Biology not PLoS One (Score:4, Funny)
Do you think PLoS Biology will be available on the iPad?
Re:paper was in PLoS Biology not PLoS One (Score:2, Funny)
"The robots evolved" - WTF?! People kept training the neural network to create desirable functionality, without people training the neural network and doing "mutations" those robots would have evolved as much as a lightbulb stuck up somebody's arse!
Isn't that what evolution is all about?
Changing to get desirable functionality/traits, that is, not shoving lightbulb up people's arses.
Re:Evolution (Score:5, Funny)
It would learn, amongst other things:
A whole lot about sexual possibilities, as well as plenty of impossibilities.
Far too much about Megan Fox, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan.
That editing wikipedia is pointless, no matter how programmed for repetitive tasks you are.
That almost every review of a new product is shilled all over the net.
There's a very good chance that that robot would go out of its way to annihilate us all after what it learned on the Internet.
Of course, it would buttrape us first....
Reminds me of the Mall (Score:3, Funny)
The predator and prey bots reminds me of sales people chasing around after anyone who wanders too closely while they try their sales pitch.
Warning: following comment is Troll and Flamebait (Score:1, Funny)
So, a group made some beings in a 'universe' that are unable to see their creators. The beings were made self replicating, and were fiddled with. Then group withdrew and left the beings to their devices. Eventually beings denied being created in first place.
Where have I heard this before? This is eerily familiar...
Re:And I predict (Score:3, Funny)
"we can win the war by trapping the little fucker in IE6."
Don't the Geneva and Hague Conventions prohibit that level of cruelty?
Re:Evolution (Score:3, Funny)
Probably the same [encycloped...matica.com]
Re:Evolution (Score:1, Funny)
it would buttrape us with tentacles and an oiled up midget while Slender Man watching from the corner of the room
Re:Evolution (Score:3, Funny)
Well, Dr. Who plots are always well thought out and reasonable.