ALIFE VII Workshop on the Coevolution of Brains and Bodies

3 August 2000
Portland, Oregon USA
Organizers: Tim Taylor, John Hallam, Hod Lipson, Tom Ray

[Schedule Part I] [Schedule Part II] [Possible Topics of Discussion] [Attendees]

[Workshop Home Page] [Talk Abstracts]

Schedule

Part I (8-10am, 3 August)

0800—0810 Tim Taylor, Hod Lipson, Tom Ray Welcome/Introduction
0810—0830 Josh Bongard Talk 1: Applying Developmental Genetics for Evolving Complete Agents
0830—0850 Alastair Channon Talk 2: The Importance of Brain-Body Coevolution in the Natural Selection of AI-Life
0850—0910 Tim Taylor Talk 4: New features in the latest physics engines
0910—0930 Tom Ray Talk 5: Aesthetically Evolved Virtual Pets [full paper]
0930—0950 all Open discussion on topics raised
0950   Close of Part I

Part II (7-10pm, 3 August)

1900—1910   Recap of Part I
1910—1930 Adam Rotaru-Varga Talk 6: Theoretical and Encoding Issues
1930—1950 Hod Lipson Talk 7: Issues in Brain-Body Coevolution
1950—2130 all Open discussion of issues arising from talks, from distributed list of questions, etc.
2130—2140 Tim Taylor, Hod Lipson, Tom Ray Summary/Close of official workshop
2140— any/all Discussions continue in bar…

[return to top of page]

Possible Topics of Discussion

  1. Controllers: What do we want from a controller? What dynamic properties should it have? What are the best encodings?
  2. Sensors and Actuators: ideas for new ones?
  3. Definition of morphology: Are there better alternatives to Sims’ directed graph representation?
  4. Open-ended evolution: how to get away from fixed fitness functions?
  5. User-guided evolution
  6. Physics engines: off-the-shelf engines versus home-made ones; technical limitations of current engines; future improvements
  7. Transfer to reality
  8. Applications: Distributed evolution on the internet, beyond games and character animation?
  9. Brain-Body coevolution: when can it be considered CO-evolution?
  10. Is the distinction between brain and body arbitrary?
  11. Is brain-body coevolution necessary/sufficient for reaching complexity?

[return to top of page]

Workshop attendees

Name Affiliation
Tim Taylor University of Abertay Dundee (UK)
Tom Ray Oklahoma University (USA)
Hod Lipson Brandeis University (USA)
Adam Rotaru-Varga Simon Fraser University (Canada) / Framsticks
Colm Massey MathEngine PLC (UK)
Alastair Channon University of Portsmouth (UK)
Josh Bongard University of Zurich (CH)
Alzira Leite University of Edinburgh (UK)
Klas Augustsson Royal Institute of Technology (SWE)

[return to top of page]

Document last updated: Tim Taylor, Thursday, 10 August 2000 15:27:52