Bizarre Soft Robots Evolve to Run

This crazy looking thing is a simulated robot, made up of two different kinds of muscles along with bones and soft tissue for structure. This robot wasn’t designed, it was evolved over a thousand virtual generations to move as fast, as far, and as functionally as possible. t’s nice that these researchers (including Jeff Clune from the University of Wyoming, who posted this video) are totally aware that these robots are wacky little things, but it’s kind of amazing how successful evolution is at creating success out of just a few basic structures. And in the greater scheme of things, 1,000 generations is not a whole lot: in human terms, that’s only 25,000 years, while modern Homo Sapiens have been around for ten times as long. [Read More]