Evolving nanoparts

Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Sun, 3 Oct 1999 09:43:06 -0700 (PDT)

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