breve Creatures video and screenshots

Just to give you an idea how it looks like when there's a creature fairly well evolved...


This one's at generation 729, max distance travelled: 45.97 and it's not going anywhere fast...

But this creature:





is more promising, after only 19 generations it was around 30, now it's inching towards 43, yay!

Video of second one, hosted on YouTube:



I used SaverLab from Dozing Cat Software, because currently breve 2.3 doesn't run the simulation used for the screensaver, so there's no way to do screengrabs or movie-exports.

breve physics simulation

breve http://www.spiderland.org/breve/

"breve is a free, open-source software package which makes it easy to build 3D simulations of decentralized systems and artificial life. Users define the behaviors of agents in a 3D world and observe how they interact. breve includes physical simulation and collision detection so you can simulate realistic creatures, and an OpenGL display engine so you can visualize your simulated worlds.

breve is available for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows."

I did a bit of experimenting with it, and this program is impressive! It has its own physics simulation engine, a 3D renderer and a powerful language, complete with interfacing capabilities to other languages.
I may post a script of one of the robots that are currently evolving on my (horribly slow) computer, if someone is interested.
To get an idea of the genetic algorithm in action, open one of the physics-examples in the demo section (walker being the fastest evolving one.)

My computer is waaaay too slow to do serious evolving (a G3@350MHurtz, sigh...) so I'm looking into a way to distribute the system... If I'm not gazing at the screensaver (OS X only)

Flocking behaviour... In a 3D space

http://people.artcenter.edu/~berk/alavs/#abstract

They call it art, rather than technology, and when you watch the video's, you have to agree it is beautiful, the majestic movements, the whale-like sounds...



Of course, I had to think about Mars rightaway... Martian atmosphere, although thin, is mainly CO2, so it is quite heavy, there's a wide choice for buoyant gasses to choose from: Helium, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Oxygen... CO2 not being an oxidiser, using Hydrogen would be a safe option. Downside (there's always a downside) is of course that these blimps would be quite huge if you wanted a usable payload attached...