brains for brevecreatures?
When I first saw Karl Sims's Evolving Virtual Creatures years ago, I was, of course, totally amazed, and ever since had it in the back of my head to build and play with something like that. Easier said than done. But I happened across Breve yesterday, totally by accident, and, hey! Someone's done all the hard work for me!
Digging in, though, I see that the critters in breveCreatures are much simpler than those by Sims, just wind-up-and-go machines with no decision-making ability--not that they aren't very cool in their own right. Has anyone yet made an attempt to add simple "brain" circuitry into the mix? Or the other tasks, like swimming/hopping/grab-the-block? Any suggestions or warnings before I start spending all my free time hacking in Breve?
Thanks!
-Dave
Better brains for
Better brains for breveCreatures would be awesome. Especially a reusable scheme with the sophistication of Sims' brains. breveCreatures are currently, for the most part, brainless.
I know that people have written neural network controllers for various simulations, but I don't know of anybody evolving Sims-style neural circuitry for the creatures.
As for the various tasks you might take on, "grab-the-block" sounds like the best candidate. breve does not support air/water viscosity, so swimming is more or less ruled out (unless you do a lot of work to implement it yourself). Hopping is very interesting, but if I recall correctly, Sims himself did not have much success with it, so I'm guessing that it might be difficult.
Good luck! Be sure to post here with anything cool you come up with.
- jon
Complete Neural Networks
You can download the entire nervous system for a bumble bee ~40MB
To let the optimist shine through be willing to accept failure, without accepting defeat.