from Hacker News

A system in which soft robots “evolve” to walk or climb

by DrNuke on 12/18/21, 2:57 PM with 11 comments

• by meta-level on 12/18/21, 11:58 PM

  I'm a bit surprised nobody mentioned Karl Sims Evolved Virtual Creatures yet (https://karlsims.com/evolved-virtual-creatures.html).

• by wubbert on 12/19/21, 2:41 AM

  I don't think it's right to computer simulations "robots".

• by ed on 12/18/21, 8:51 PM

  Very cool! It might be hard to imagine applications for this, but one could be Xenobots, which are soft robots made from living cells.

  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/science/xenobots-robots-f...

• by wbobeirne on 12/18/21, 10:22 PM

  I remember "playing" BoxCar2D[1] for hours as a kid, unfortunately Flash has done away with it. Looks like there have been some JS-based spiritual successors though[2].

  1. http://boxcar2d.com/

  2. https://rednuht.org/genetic_cars_2/

• by cyral on 12/19/21, 3:28 AM

  Reminds me of this “evolution simulator” series a YouTuber made years ago: https://youtu.be/GOFws_hhZs8

• by kris-s on 12/18/21, 8:51 PM

  Fabulous animations, I hope this means we're close to applying these genetic algorithm techniques to soft robots that we can actually build.

• by jaytaylor on 12/18/21, 9:31 PM

  Archive link: https://archive.md/F9ehg

• by clavicat on 12/18/21, 9:15 PM

  I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.