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To: js1138
Carl Sims' Virtual Creatures Paper, Siggraph '94 is an earlier computer validation of the theory of evolution.

Programming a robot (or simulation of a robot) to walk in a real physical environment is hard problem. It's difficult enough to compute the set of parameters used to program the joints of a flexible creature with the right pressures and angles to get a creature to stand up and balance itself, let alone figure out the complex interactions required to define it's gait used run, jump, fly, swim, climb, etc.

Using genetic algorithms, however, Carl Sims was able to completely avoid all that complicated design work, and achieve results far better and faster than if he had set out to directly design the motor characteristics of the creatures himself.

Evolution is not simply random changes as creationists tend to think. It also requires a mechanism for selecting good random mutations over bad ones (the environment), and a memory to store a history of good changes (DNA).

Watch the videos on this website. All of the creatures in the paper not only "evolved" from a "single celled" organism, but they also "learned" to walk on their own, using a computer program that puts models of physical creatures' motor characteristics based on a simplified DNA in a real world physical environment.

http://www.genarts.com/karl/evolved-virtual-creatures.html

His famous video is at:

http://alife.ccp14.ac.uk/ftp-mirror/alife/zooland/pub/research/ci/Alife/karl-sims/creatures-demo.mpg
887 posted on 05/09/2003 2:19:59 PM PDT by freeper4u
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To: freeper4u
Programming a robot (or simulation of a robot) to walk in a real physical environment is hard problem

Don't you see the contradiction in your statement and how it relates to the rest of your statement?

BTW. It is a nice cartoon.

942 posted on 05/09/2003 4:54:52 PM PDT by AndrewC
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