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Karl Sims - Evolved Virtual Creatures, Evolution Simulation, 1994

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8.1K subscribers • 1 video on Hallway

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  • Recommended by 2 people: 2 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2014 to 2021.
  • Presented by Karl Sims, researcher and media artist
  • May be out of date. Uploaded 17 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

797K views17 years ago2 recommendations

AI and machine learningComputer scienceAlgorithmsClassic machine learning

Karl Sims demonstrates virtual block creatures that evolve morphology and control systems to swim, walk, and jump in a simulated physics environment.

This video shows results from a research project involving simulated Darwinian evolutions of virtual block creatures. A population of several hundred creatures is created within a supercomputer, and each creature is tested for their ability to perform a given task, such the ability to swim in a simulated water environment. Those that are most successful survive, and their virtual genes containing coded instructions for their growth, are copied, combined, and mutated to make offspring for a new population. The new creatures are again tested, and some may be improvements on their parents. As this cycle of variation and selection continues, creatures with more and more successful behaviors can emerge. More info: karlsims.com/evolved-virtual-creatures.html

Why it's here

2 people recommend this, 1 disputes it

What people say. Engineers frequently cite this classic 1994 video as a pioneering demonstration of evolutionary algorithms and artificial life.

jal278on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Maverick forerunner of artificial life and animation remains largely unknown”

Something like evolving virtual creatures would be a fun (although pretty ambitious) addition 1. There's a processing 2D virutal creatures model called sticky feet 2 (source available) that perhaps could be ported to js pretty quickly. 1 link to this video 2 link
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ehsankiaon Hacker News • Recommends

On “ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program”

Also relevant is Karl Sims' Evolving Virtual Creatures: link to this video Not sure how they're connected, but I remember being obsessed with that paper and actually recreating it in 2D as a grad project.
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fragsworthon Hacker News • Disputes

On “Robots learn to evolve and improve”

I think they just took a concept figured out in 1994 ( link to this video ) and applied it to robots, in an attempt to get an easy publication written up. Really, though, we know we can make robot parts. The hard part is the software. What these people did by making it robotic was completely pointless (because making the robots is a huge amount of unnecessary added work) that doesn't add to our knowledge until we can solve all the software problems in simulations first.
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informatimagoon Hacker News • Mentions

On “‘I am utterly disgusted’: Legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki takes AI down a peg”

…is that "This is a presentation of an artificial intelligence model which learned certain movements." Obviously, they didn't teach it to move, they had a certain model of the body, and let the AI loose, trying to learn by itself how to move. This is a classical application of genetic programming. See how some of those creatures look "creepy" too: link to this video link link link They obtained some creepy result, added a creepy texture and made it into a quick & dirty demo for "animating zombies". Clearly, the people who assisted to this demo didn't understand what it was. And the answer of the artist was the worst. Imagine assisting to Wright brothers' demo, and comi…
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informatimagoon Hacker News • Mentions

On ““An insult to life itself”: Miyazaki critiques artificial intelligence animation”

…is that "This is a presentation of an artificial intelligence model which learned certain movements." Obviously, they didn't teach it to move, they had a certain model of the body, and let the AI loose, trying to learn by itself how to move. This is a classical application of genetic programming. See how some of those creatures look "creepy" too: link to this video link link link They obtained some creepy result, added a creepy texture and made it into a quick & dirty demo for "animating zombies". Clearly, the people who assisted to this demo didn't understand what it was. And the answer of the artist was the worst. Imagine assisting to Wright brothers' demo, and comi…
View on Hacker News

daharton Hacker News • Mentions

On “Self-Replicating Functions”

I hadn't before, thanks for the tip! It's been a while since I played with this stuff, but I might have to get a copy and explore. I have heard of MetaSynth in audio circles. I'm not sure, but the images and videos on the ArtMatic site look (to me) very inspired and influenced by the work of Karl Sims, which is the main source of inspiration behind my project... link You can find a bunch of his videos on YouTube too. link link link link to this video
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daharton Hacker News • Mentions

On “Surprising Creativity: Anecdotes from Evolutionary Computation”

The article's philosophical discussion of "surprise" feels a little klunky and academic to me, and I think conflates some different kinds of surprise, but it's still really fun to think about. Many of the projects here are all inspired by Karl Sims' work in the early 90's. link Sims evolved virtual creates by specifying goals to achieve and then running a physics simulation. He noted at the time that the evolution process was great at exploiting bugs in the simulation. link to this video I was insipred enough by Sims' genetic images ( link ) that I spent a few years trying to get surprising and beautiful results of my own, with some limited success ( link ).
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HaukeHion Hacker News • Mentions

On “It looks like you’re trying to take over the world”

I think evolution is not an undirected process in that sense because it's an optimization process, that optimizes to create more copies of itself. Superintelligence will likely use some Evolutionary Computation (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_computation ). Also see Karl Sims 'Creatures' from the 90s: link to this video or OpenAI's Multi-Agent Hide and Seek: youtube.com/watch?v=kopoLzvh5jY
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u/GenghisJuanin r/compsci • Mentions

On “Evolving Swimming Soft-Bodied Creatures”

Here is another interesting simulation of evolving creatures from 1994!
2View on Reddit