I’m sure you’re quite proud of the SimCity world you’ve created. Awesome stadium, bro. But the technologists and evolutionary scientists at Cornell University have just reduced your accomplishment to correctly assembling a Dominoes pizza. Bravo:
The team incorporated concepts from developmental biology and how nature builds complex animals—from jellyfish to jaguars. The result is an array of bizarre, simulated robots that evolve a diverse series of gaits and gallops.
The video shows evolution in action: A creature evolves into a galloping, soft robot over 1,000 generations. While 1,000 generations is relatively short by natural evolution standards, it is enough to demonstrate the power of evolution to create counterintuitive designs, according to the researchers.
