From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Sun Oct 03 1999 - 10:43:06 MDT
Here is another example of something where we are closer than I thought.
Slashdot has this article "Genetic Algorithm Generated Lego Bridge":
See: http://slashdot.org/articles/99/10/02/2140232.shtml
There is a home page for the software (DEMO: Dynamical & Evolutionary
Machine Organization):
See: http://www.demo.cs.brandeis.edu/index.html
and the page where you can watch the bridge being built:
See: http://www.demo.cs.brandeis.edu/pr/buildable/anim1.html
[One of the best examples I've seen of a real use for Java
(instead of those that reprogram the back button on your browser!)]
They also do Cranes, Tables and Trees.
They apparently used a 1000 Pentium-II Beowulf cluster from
Genetic Programming:
See: http://www.genetic-programming.com/machine1000.html
Now, what makes this cool is that it means we pretty much have the
software methods and processing resources *in hand* to evolve
nanoscale parts. What we need are the part descriptions similar
to what they used to describe the bridge, crane, tree, etc.
My optimism just went up another notch.
Robert
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