Evolution Shown Through Robots
June 2nd, 2009
The end is coming soon. Robots are learning to swim and replicate animals! Professor Long and his students of Vassar College have been doing some experiments; Experiments to learn about evolution. This small group of humans (so they say) have been putting a predator robot in the same pool as a pray robot named Preyro (bottom robot in image.) Preyro is the one that shows the evolution. It swims around the pool looking for “food” like a real animal and eventually it will come across the predator robots, Predator-X and Tadiator. The whole point in this interaction is to see how the prey will get away. It may fail to escape, so if it does they improve the robot by adding fins, tails, ect.
They experiment with different elements of the anatomy. The tail is a good example. They add vertebrae to the tail to make it stiffer; to see if it is able to get away easier. They also tried making the tail larger, but the results showed no affect because the extra weight made up for the bonus push. In reality the larger tailed fish would disprove to be the best as needed in Darwinism. The fish with the seven vertebrae would be the most survived type of the species, leaving the others to die and this one to reproduce and make more surviving species, at least until the predator robot would evolve too. This whole cycle is the point that Professor John Long and his men are trying to prove through these experiments. Now, could they become disasters of humanity, robots evolving extremely fast and taking over the world? Well we’ll just have to wait and see cause no one, not even these robotic-maniacs can predict when and if the world will end.
