Evolution of Morphology and Behaviour for Physically Modelled
Creatures
Over the last few years I investigated methods to increase the
behavioural complexity of physically modelled creatures that can be
generated using artificial life techniques. Some demos are available.
Email Discussion List
In order to maintain the discussion between groups currently working in
this topic, I have set up an email discussion list called EMBody
(Evolution of Morphology and Behaviour). More information on this list,
and instructions
for subscribing to it, are available at
http://lists.idyll.org/listinfo/embody
Workshops
I co-organised the Workshop on the Coevolution of Brains and Bodies,
and was held at the Seventh International Conference on Artificial Life
(in Portland, Oregon, 1-6 August 2000). Details of this event and
abstracts from the talks are available
here.
MathEngine
When I finished my PhD, I worked for MathEngine for a
while, where I was reimplementing Karl Sims' work using MathEngine's
simulation tools. A demo is available
here.
Related
Research on Evolving Virtual Creatures
I have just started compiling this list of related research. The dates
are indicative only - they are based, where applicable, on the first
date of publication of the research. I include them to give a rough
idea of chronology, but realise that this sort of work requires a lot
of development time before publication. If you feel strongly that I
have given an incorrect date to a particular project, let me know!
Email me if you know of any other projects that should be mentioned
here.
- The
original Evolved Virtual Creatures by Karl Sims, 1994
- Gene
Pool and Darwin
Pond by Jeffrey Ventrella, 1994 -- present
- Adaptive
Controllers for Artificial Fish by Demetri Terzopoulos, 1994
- Evolution
of Legged Locomotion by Dirk Arnold, 1997
- Evolved
controllers for Lampreys and Salamanders by Auke Jan
Ijspeert, 1998-present
- Evolving
Quadupeds and Tripeds by Richard Reeve (using DynaMechs), 1998
- Framsticks
by Komosinski et al., 1999-present
- Reimplementation
of Sims' work by Tim Taylor and Colm Massey (using
MathEngine), 1999
- Evolving
Bipeds by Torsten Reil (using MathEngine), 1999
- Virtual
Life by Tom Ray (using MathEngine), 2000
- MorphEngine
by Josh Bongard (using MathEngine, and now ODE), 2000
- Golem
by Hod Lipson, 2000
- Spiderland
by Jon Klein, 2001
- Generative
Encodings for Design Automation by Greg Hornby, 2001
- Sigel
by students at the University of Dortmund (using DynaMechs), 2001
- Evolved
Controllers for Various Morphologies by Gene Ruebsamen (using
ODE), 2002
- Evolved
Creatures by Mattias Fagerlund (using ODE), 2002
- Evolved
Creatures (with demos of evolved flight) by (Jeff) Shim Yoon-Sik
(using ODE), 2002
- Virtual
Creatures
(with co-evolved creatures) by Thomas Miconi, 2005-present
- Evolving
Virtual Creatures (some nice examples) by Nicolas Lassabe,
2006-present
- Evolving
Virtual Creatures and Catapults by Nicolas
Chaumont et al, 2007
There is a nice
presentation
on
levitated.net
which includes various examples of virtual creatures.
Physics
Engines
Here is a list of free or commercially available physics engines which
might be useful for anyone wanting to write their own system for
evolving virtual creatures. If you know of any others to add to this
list, please let me know!
- Open Dynamics
Engine
(alternative link)
from Russell Smith at q12.org (freeware, open source)
- Vortex
from Critical Mass Labs (academic licence available - contact Critical
Mass for details and prices)
- Havok
(academic licence available - contact Havok for details and prices)
- Darwin2K
(freeware, open-source, reduced-coordinate approach) by Chris Leger
- DynaMechs
(freeware, open-source, reduced-coordinate approach) by Scott McMillan
et al.
- Breve
(freeware, hybrid approach, with own programming language) by Jon Klein
- JSpringies
(2D mass-spring simulation written in Java, distributed under Gnu GPL)
New (
January
2007): Here
are some new physics engines that I haven't
yet looked at in detail:
Chris Hecker
has a
useful
webpage about the simulation of rigid body
dynamics.
The
gPhysics
site is a blog about physics simulation and
related topics, and also has a
list
of physics engines.
Document last updated: Tim Taylor, Wednesday,
14 August 2013