Flip and Go - Evolved Virtual Creature

This creature is from a population evolved in 3DVCE. The population was first evolved for jumping and then for traversing the rough terrain shown in the video.

This particular population evolved a body plan that starts upside-down. The creature starts by flipping itself over. At the end of the video, after the credits, I deliberately flip the creature upside-down after it has already righted itself, and it promptly flips back again to continue its journey, so it seems the flipping is not just a 'hard-wired' initial movement pattern, but is triggered by the sensors as a reaction to being upside-down.

This creature was sent to me on September 16, 2008, so the lag in my queue is about a month at this point (15 creatures or so). If anyone has sent me creatures lately and is wondering why they haven't appeared on youtube - fear not! They'll get here, but it could take a while.

Processing time for the evolution was kindly donated on the PC of Rob Cattral.

Want to evolve unique creatures of your own? Visit the project web site at:
http://www.stellaralchemy.com/lee/virtual_creatures.html

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• 3D
• virtual
• creature
• evolution
• genetic
• algorithm

[ecreif]

i love this one.. really interesting technique... what are your experiences with using a much bigger variety of functions,values and inputs it can use(such as creature height, speed, angle to orign, etc)? does this improve evolution speed or is it bad for finding good solutions?

[kjlg74]

I'm not really sure if combining multiple measures makes any difference at all. I would wager that the main influence is just the difficulty of the individual measures (if jumping were harder than traveling, say) and not the fact that they're combined.

[TheReasonWhyGuy]

I would like to see, when water has been fixed, how well this creature would do.

I suspect it would do better than most land creatures in water.

[kjlg74]

The feet look like they'd make good flippers.

[newcoleco]

I like this creature. Kinda move gracefully.

Thanks for the twist ending... you still got me on this one.

[kjlg74]

I'm really pleased with this one too. I like the way it starts upside-down and flips itself over.

[AtlasRedux]

Now, that's one fascinating bugger :)

[inthefade]

This one is really cool.