Posted on 08/15/2002 4:22:46 PM PDT by Nouge
LONDON (Reuters) - A robot has taught itself the principles of flying -- learning in just three hours what evolution took millions of years to achieve, according to research by Swedish scientists published on Wednesday.
Krister Wolff and Peter Nordin of Chalmers University of Technology built a robot with wings and then gave it random instructions through a computer at the rate of 20 per second.
Each instruction produced a small movement -- the robot's wings could move up and down, forwards and backwards, and twist in either direction, the research published in Britain's New Scientist magazine said.
The robot was attached to two vertical poles to enable it to move up and down, and the meter-long wings were made from balsa-wood covered with a light plastic film.
The program instructed the robot its aim was to produce maximum lift, but had no pre-programmed data on the concept of flapping or how to do it.
At first the robot produced only twitching and jerking movements but gradually it succeeded in getting off the ground.
Feedback from a movement detector told the program how successful each combination of instructions tried had been, enabling it to evolve by ditching unsuccessful ones and pairing up new combinations of the ones that produced most lift.
Cheating was one strategy tried and rejected during the process of artificial evolution -- at one point the robot simply stood on its wing tips and later it climbed up on some objects that had been accidentally left nearby.
But after three hours the robot discovered a flapping technique -- rotating its wings through 90 degrees, raising them, then twisting back to the horizontal before pushing back down.
"This tells us that this kind of evolution is capable of coming up with flying motion," said Peter Bentley, an evolutionary computer expert at University College, London.
However, the robot could not actually fly because it was too heavy for its electrical motor.
"There's only so much that evolution can do," Bentley said.
Correction: this kind of evolution plus an intelligent designer. Without the human minds who designed, built, and programmed the robot, this mechanical critter not only wouldn't fly, it wouldn't exist.
Of course, the sheer mechanical complexity of a bee, a bat or a buzzard makes this robot look simple by comparison. (And of course bees, bats, and buzzards are alive -- something no rbot can boast.)
It took beaucoup time and big bucks to design this simple robot. But we're supposed to believe that a flying animal such as a bee, a bat or a buzzard just kinda sorta happened accidentally.
Riiiiight...
B-chan
I didn't know Gore was even interested in learning in the first place....wow.
Logical sleght of hand? The evolution refered to is "learning" by trial and error, which was made possible by it being designed and instructed what to try, and how to evaluate the response, and how to classify the results of the evaluation, to maximize the pre-programmed goal (maximum height), as well as being equiped with the equipment needed. It learned exactly what and how it was designed to learn. And it is incapable of "learning" anything it was not programmed to "learn". Cool program this guy wrote! Well designed.
I was mistaken... the evolution refered to was the evolution of the processor going through the logical instructions it was programmed with. The same thing happens when I run an analysis report at the office.
Actually, the broader lesson of this experiment is that given a set of conditions--in this case the robot computer--that set of conditions can evolve on its own.
Similarly, in the more complex set of conditions known as the universe, the universe can evolve on its own.
This is a step toward the day scientists will be able to design computers that will evolve a higher degree of intelligence--even to what we call consciousness--on their own.
"However, the robot could not actually fly because it was too heavy"
....NEXT!!
2. Have fun over time as you cross off all the items on the list you made.
Similarly, in the more complex set of conditions known as the universe, the universe can evolve on its own
It did nothing on it's own. It ran an algorithm, with no awareness of what the digital information represented. It only added when it was told to add, and subtracted when it was told to subtract. The algorithm itself was designed by a man to predictably acomplish the "evolution", calcluation of mathematical limits given random input. It did nothing but to respond to the data given according to the conditions it was pre-programmed with. If it had suddenly, without being programmed to, begun moving bits of data to different places, with some goal in mind... then you might have a case... but alas...
Former America West pilots Thomas Cloyd & Christopher Hughes
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