HOD LIPSON AND JORDAN B. POLLACK
Biological life is in control of its own means of reproduction, which
generally involves complex, autocatalysing chemical reactions. But this
autonomy of design and manufacture has not yet been realized artificially.
Robots are still laboriously designed and constructed by teams of human
engineers, usually at considerable expense. Few robots are available because
these costs must be absorbed through mass production, which is justified only
for toys, weapons and industrial systems such as automatic teller machines.
Here we report the results of a combined computational and experimental
approach in which simple electromechanical systems are evolved through
simulations from basic building blocks (bars, actuators and artificial
neurons); the 'fittest' machines (defined by their locomotive ability) are
then fabricated robotically using rapid manufacturing technology. We thus
achieve autonomy of design and construction using evolution in a 'limited
universe' physical simulation coupled to automatic fabrication.
In the field of artificial life, 'life as it could be' is examined on the
basis of understanding the principles, and simulating the mechanisms, of real
biological forms. Just as aeroplanes use the same principles as birds, but
have fixed wings, artificial lifeforms may share the same principles, but not
the same implementation in chemistry. Stored energy, autonomous movement, and
even animal communication are replicated in toys using batteries, motors and
computer chips.
Our central claim is that to realize artificial life, full autonomy must be
attained not only at the level of power and behaviour (the goal of robotics,
today5), but also at the levels of design and fabrication. Only then can we
expect synthetic creatures to sustain their own evolution. We thus seek
automatically designed and constructed physical artefacts that are functional
in the real world, diverse in architecture (possibly each slightly different),
and automatically producible with short turnaround time, at low cost and in
large quantities. So far these requirements have not been met.
Full text:
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v406/n6799/ful
l/406974a0_fs.html
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Useless hypotheses, etc.:
consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind, free will, qualia,
analog computing, cultural relativism, GAC, Cyc, Eliza, cryonics, individual
uniqueness, ego, human values, scientific relinquishment, malevolent AI,
non-sensory experience, SETI
We move into a better future in proportion as science displaces superstition.
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