The Worms part one - Evolved Virtual Creatures

This is animation footage I generated in order to snip short clips for making a creature evolution video for my presentation at the TAM6 conference in June 2008 in Las Vegas.

The processing time to evolve these worm-like creatures (which are all distant cousins of each other) was kindly donated by Wouter Lenaerts.

This is part one of two of the worm footage I gathered.

The project web page is:
http://www.stellaralchemy.com/lee/virtual_creatures.html

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

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

[MaestroAlvis]

Didn't know you could make transparent segments.

The way it was developing it's end i thought this would be another end over end worm. Kinda disappointed when it just sort of started steam rolling its way along.

A rolling creature like that might do really well on inclines.

Any idea what the steepest incline a creature has ever moved up on?

[kjlg74]

@MaestroAlvis "transparent" is one of the available paint colors, although it's a bit of an odd kind of transparency.

As for inclines, I've never implemented any - my steep landscapes are all very jagged staircase-like terrains made of many square columns all next to each other. Actual smooth inclines would be an interesting idea though!

I've seen some creatures than can handle some pretty steep jagged terrain though, maybe 45 degrees I'd guess.

[MaestroAlvis]

@kjlg74 Hmmmm, well I think the jagged terrain is important because it gives creatures places to grab on too. In this case the creature would just need to be bigger or just grow some spiky appendages. Is there actually a size limit on how big creatures can get?

Also if a surface were "smooth" then it would have no friction so unless all your shapes have some level of sliding friction then that could be a problem.

[kjlg74]

@MaestroAlvis There are several things that limit creature size. There's a limit on the number of blocks along any chain connecting the "root" block to the tip of an appendage (the body is a "tree" structure). There's a limit on the total number of blocks in the body. And finally, there's a limit on how big a single block can be. The first two of those limits can be set by the user in the creature body settings, the third is hard-coded.

[Yumminess0]

how do you increase the chance of it rolling like this?

[kjlg74]

I wish I knew. The only help I can give is that these were evolved without oscillators (the sine wave components in the "brain" settings), and had fitness based on distance traveled.

[MaestroAlvis]

@kjlg74 What about limits in overall dimensions like height or length of the whole creature. In an evolution that I ran where I just wanted to get a creature that jumps as high as possible I didn't have it determine fitness relative to size and as I watched it I wondered why it did not just increase it's fitness by increasing it's size.

[cliftut]

I'm curious if there are any known organisms that move like this in real life?

[kjlg74]

Oh! This is much like how the end-over-end worm started off (see video #60 in the zoo). Perhaps your run will produce a 3rd independently evolved end-over-end worm (perhaps not, but it would be interesting).

[inthefade]

I'm evolving one that rolls like this right now.