Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Big Ideas Technology Energy Innovation Education
Tweet 32 REDDIT DIGG STUMBLE EMAIL
IDEAS & INNOVATIONS
Beware. Scientists are Creating MachinesThat Can Evolve on Their OwnOr to put it a nicer way, researchers have found a way for robots to grow on their own
By Will KnightSmithsonian magazine, December 2013, Subscribe
Teaching a simulated robot to walk is significantly easier if it starts with a simple body plan and grows limbs as it learns. (Source: JoshBongard)
Forget what you see in movies. Most robots sit in a factory somewhere doing dull, repetitive work. Even if theirsoftware does dream of a more interesting job, their physical form remains fixed from the day they’reassembled to the moment they’re junked.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, say pioneers of “evo devo robo”—evolutionary developmental robotics, whichapplies principles of natural selection and biological development to machine design.
Josh Bongard, a computer scientist at the University of Vermont, is designing robots that go through growthspurts. Like anxious teenagers, they experience an awkward period of physical development before they findtheir place in the world.
Bongard’s virtual experiments precisely model robot actions on a computer, beginning with a limbless,wormlike machine with several body segments. It has one goal: Make progress across a flat surface toward alight source. But instead of giving the robot a complete set of instructions, Bongard generates a wholepopulation of bots and lets evolution do the work.
Each virtual robot moves randomly—for instance, one segment might move an inch to the left and anothermight bend 90 degrees. While most of the bots flail hopelessly, a few, by chance, nudge forward. The stepsbehind all the little advances are stored and combined in a process that mimics the mixing of genes in living,reproducing beings. Then, at some point, Bongard steps in and gives the successful robots legs. And evolutioncontinues.
Bongard has found that he can evolve a contraption that walks upright in just 100 generations. By contrast, acontraption that starts with legs already formed takes 250 generations. “It makes sense to stay close to theground when you’re young,” he says, “and only gradually grow legs and stand upright, which makes you moreunstable.”
A robot that can grow would be highly useful. Imagine a spacecraft landing on an alien world growing anextra pair of legs when it encounters treacherous terrain. Or a search and rescue bot that morphs from stockyto slender to navigate a tight crevice. But will such a machine ever be more than a computer simulation? “It’sthe last manufacturing step that has always haunted roboticists,” says Hod Lipson, who directs Cornell
WALL-E Goes toWork for CheaperSolar Power
A Smart, Sleek,Money-SavingThermostat
View Full Special Report»
In The Magazine
December 2013The 2013 SmithsonianAmerican Ingenuity Awards
Mars Attack!
Notes from the Edge
Voices Carry
Follow Us
Top Stories
1. Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, EarthWas Covered by Giant Mushrooms
2. The Neuroscientist Who Discovered He Was aPsychopath
3. This Could Be the Oldest Flowering PlantEver Found in North America
4. A History of Slavery and Genocide Is Hiddenin Modern DNA
5. Who Wrote the First Dinosaur Novel?6. Can This Water-Recycling Shower Save
$1,000 in Bills?7. 2013 November8. The Pentagon Just Built a Mobile Chemical
Weapons-Neutralizing Factory9. Native Intelligence
10. Watch Fire Ants Use Their Bodies To FormLiving Architecture
SmithsonianInstitution
TravelWith Us
SmithsonianStore
SmithsonianChannel
Air & SpaceMagazine
SubscribeRenewGive a Gift
History & Archaeology Science Arts & Culture Travel At the Smithsonian Photos Videos Games ShopSubscribe Ideas & Innovations
Like 22 | | | | | | |
Viewed Emailed Commented
SearchSearch...
Tweet 32 REDDIT DIGG STUMBLE EMAIL
University’s Creative Machines Lab. “You can design crazy robots, but in the end you have to make them.”
Lipson’s work might help. He has used a 3-D printer to churn out robot components and has demonstrated amachine capable of assembling copies of itself with premade components. Those feats suggest it might bepossible to design a bot that manufactures itself—that is, evolves a body plan and builds it.
For now, Bongard wants others to join the experiments. In August he made his virtual robots available online.He calls them ludobots, ludo from the Latin play. “Primates are evolved to recognize a limp in anotheranimal,” he says. “We would like to crowd-source robotics,” so people can build machines, observe how theymove and fix flaws.
Subscribe now for more of Smithsonian's coverage on history, science and nature.
Related topics: Innovation Technology
Around the Web
Quantum Mechanic
View Table of Contents»
Subscribe »
One year printsubscription + FREEiPad access
First Name
Last Name
Address 1
Address 2
City
Zip
SUBSCRIBE NOW AND SAVE 81%
NEXT >
Travel with Smithsonian
Smithsonian Store
Top 5 Techniques of aNinja Master (3:10)
The Pharaoh Who Foundthe Sphinx (4:20)
Danger at the WateringHole (2:54)
Eyewitness Accounts ofKennedy's Assassination(3:04)
We Recommend
Top 5 Techniques of a Ninja Master (3:10)Food pills, knockout drugs, and body-hardening beatings - the last ninja master teaches his secrets only to a lucky few
Like 22 | | | | | | |
Recommended by
Add New Comment
Name: (required)
Email: (required)
Comment:
Comments are moderated, and will not appear until Smithsonian.com has approved them. Smithsonian reserves the right notto post any comments that are unlawful, threatening, offensive, defamatory, invasive of a person's privacy, inappropriate,confidential or proprietary, political messages, product endorsements, or other content that might otherwise violate any laws orpolicies.
Submit Comment
Comments
View Full Archive
Dec 2013
Nov 2013
Oct 2013
RECENT ISSUES NEWSLETTER
Sign up for regular email updates from Smithsonianmagazine, including free newsletters, special offers andcurrent news updates.
Subscribe Now Submit
ABOUT US
Smithsonian.com expands on Smithsonian magazine's in-depth coverage of history, science, nature, the arts, travel,world culture and technology. Join us regularly as we takea dynamic and interactive approach to exploring modernand historic perspectives on the arts, sciences, nature,world culture and travel, including videos, blogs and areader forum.
EXPLORE OUR BRANDS
About Smithsonian Contact Us Advertising Subscribe RSS Topics Member Services Copyright Site Map Privacy Policy Ad Choices
Enter your email address
