Posted on 08/12/2015 4:23:10 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Full Title: The robot that BREEDS: 'Mother' machine builds and tests 'children' models to make each generation better than the last
The robots were built by engineers from the University of Cambridge, lead by Dr Fumiya Iida.
Dr Iida and his team designed the 'mother' robot and programmed it simply to build a robot capable of movement.
From this, and without any further human intervention or computer simulation, the robot built 'children' made of between one and five plastic cubes with a small motor inside.
In each of five separate experiments, the mother designed, built and tested generations of ten children, using the information gathered from one generation to inform the design of the next.
The results found that preferential traits were passed down through generations, so that the 'fittest' individuals in the last generation performed a set task twice as quickly as the fittest individuals in the first generation. 'Natural selection is basically reproduction, assessment, reproduction, assessment and so on,' said Dr Iida who worked in collaboration with researchers at ETH Zurich.
'That's essentially what this robot is doing – we can actually watch the improvement and diversification of the species.'
For each robot child, there is a unique 'genome' made up of a combination of between one and five different genes, which contains all of the information about the 'child's' shape, construction and motor commands.
As in nature, evolution in robots takes place through 'mutation', where components of one gene are modified or single genes are added or deleted, and 'crossover', where a new genome is formed by merging genes from two individuals.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Mommybots.
Does Mommybot abort her children when and if they fail the tests?
No, the PPbots do that.
The product doesn’t quite live up to the hype, thank goodness.
I don’t know but I think my girlfriend is a robot.
Girlbot.
Skynet, here we come.
Sexbot Ping!
SOON!!!!
YEAH! SHAKE THAT METAL MONEYMAKER!
It's not nice.
Well, now we will need Planned Robothood.
Cut them little robot, oops, I mean undeveloped machinery parts out and sell them for research.
Been done ...
Or Anita?
Surely not Beatrice...
What could possibly go wrong?
Something like that.
James P. Hogan wrote a book on this:
http://www.amazon.com/Code-Lifemaker-James-P-Hogan/dp/0345305493/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
pleasure model, or b1tch?
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