Peter Bruinsma wrote,

>I was thinking along the line of legged robots who are learning how to
>walk from scratch, e.g. they have all the necessary hardware but they
>need to 'come up' with the software.

In my experience GE and GP only really work when you have huge populations
(hundreds of thousands) over large numbers of generations (hundreds). It may
prove impractical for a couple of dozon physical real robots to learn how to
walk. Simulated robots using simulated PIC's on the other hand... You could
build a simulated Robot, plug it into Virtual Breadboard with a PIC16F877
simulated controller and let your bots make whoopie :-)

Hey now this becoming fun. While I am at it I could make an internet plugin
extension to virtual breadboard to allow interested members to host their
own pet robots as part of the "collective" (any trekies out there) so that
potentially several thousand simulated robots could be going at it like
rabbits at any one time.

And as it so happens..(no co-incidence really) I am just about to release
the new version of Virtual Breadboard with an extensibily component and a
PIC16F877 so I am motivated to contribute to something like this to increase
interest in Virtual Breadboard. Once it learns to walk the real thing could
be built to see how it goes. Funny thing is that I actually did my
university thesis on this exact thing 10 years ago. I build a GE that
learn't how to program a fuzzy logic controller to control a PIXAR Luxo lamp
simulation for "smooth and optimal motion" and also how to drive a car
around a track. Might have to drag the old code out...

Who knows.. it might actually walk!!

Regards,
James Caska
http://www.virtualbreadboard.com
caska@virtualbreadboard.com
ujVM - 'The worlds smallest java virtual machine'

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