Artificial Life Lecture 16

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Artificial Life Lecture 16

• Wrap up course!
• Survey of Artificial Life topics covered
• And Alife skills
• Work in Alife academic research ..
• and commercial ..
• Recent robotics at Sussex
• Personal prejudiced list of hot research topics

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Alife Topics covered - Evolutionary

• Evolution
• Evolutionary Algorithms
• Co-evolution
• Evolution of communication (next week)
• Development, L-Systems, G-gtP mappings
• Fitness Landscapes
• Neutral Networks

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Alife topics evolutionary, more

• Information and Life and Evolution
• Tierra and Avida
• GP and Classifier Systems

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Alife topics DS and robotics

• Dynamical Systems approach to cognition
• Braitenberg vehicles
• CTRNNs
• Evolutionary Robotics
• Passive Dynamic Walking

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Alife topics beyond

• CAs and RBNs
• Models of Genetic Regulatory Systems
• Morphogenesis, L-Systems
• Homeostasis
• Gaia Theory, Daisyworld
• Artificial Chemistry
• Autocatalysis, autopoiesis

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Alife Skills

• Programming a GA
• Microbial GA
• Programming a CTRNN
• Programming a Lego EASy-mind robot
• ODE physics engine (next week)
• How to prepare a project proposal
• (hopefully) how to carry through a project

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Work in Artificial Life

• Research. In Spring term I shall give a seminar
  on How to apply for a PhD/DPhil
• Main points will be you have to find a research
  topic and a supervisor
• UK/Europe, apply in Spring, N. American system
  different
• jobs outside academia ..

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Companies interested in Alife
BT a few years ago claimed they took 15 of all
computer science graduates in the UK surely no
longer true! BT RD labs at Martlesham (nr
Ipswich) used to have 4000 in Development and 600
in Research. Now slimmed down, sort of privatised
into cost centres and called BT Exact. EASy
contacts specifically with their Future
Technologies Group (formerly from 1996
Artificial Life Group) (Richard
Tateson) http//more.btexact.com/projects/ftg Evol
utionary computing, biological metaphors, fruit
flies and cell phones. Has funded DPhils
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Companies interested in Alife

• Hewlett Packard - HP Labs Bristol
• BICAS Biologically-Inspired Complex Adaptive
  Systems http//www.hpl.hp.com/research/bicas/
• Dave Cliff (started the EASy MSc here)
• HP Labs Agent Research
• Complex Adaptive Systems Research Group
• Agent-based models in economics/market trading
• Immune system models for computer security
• hpDJ
• Take EASy/Alife students for Summer projects

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Companies interested in EASy

• Many other big companies with research labs have
  an active interest in EASy issues eg British
  Aerospace, Logica, Nortel
• Smaller labs MASA, other businesses in Sussex
  Innovation Centre
• Natural Motion www.naturalmotion.com (CEO Torsten
  Reil is EASy graduate)
• Brighton media companies eg Runtime collective
  http//www.runtime-collective.com/
• Victoria Real http//www.victoriareal.com/
• Searchspace http//www.searchspace.com/index.shtml
  
• Etc etc

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Recent robotics at Sussex

• Research mostly done in CCNR http//www.cogs.susse
  x.ac.uk/ccnr/
• Insect and robot navigation (eg Kyran Dale and
  Linc Smith)
• ER to investigate Learning (Tuci) Development
  (Wood) Collective Behaviour (Quinn) Multiple
  sensor modalities (Bird) GasNets (Tom Smith and
  Phil Husbands) Visually guided behaviour (Emmet
  Spier) Homeostasis (Di Paolo) Passive Dynamic
  Walking (Vaughan)
• Also eg Buehrmann Fernando Sojakka Macinnes
  Vickerstaff Bardeen
• Evolvable Hardware (Adrian Thompson, Garvie,
  Kenneally)

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Alife simulation/modelling

• Real biological studies eg in population biology
  and ecology
• Traditional scepticism to modelling in biology
• Mathematical models Journal of Theoretical
  Biology
• Now all over the place !!
• Alife Agent-based model translates to/from
  IBM Individual Based Model
• Too many to list!

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Hot research topics
Personal prejudiced list Could supervise summer
projects in these areas
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Passive Dynamic Walking
This is a very embodied, dynamical systems
approach. So far PDWs have just gone down gentle
slopes under gravity. There is scope for adding
small amounts of power input for more general
walking. Matt Williamsons work, associated with
Brooks COG project, using coupled oscillators,
seems a very promising lead that could be applied
here. Eric Vaughan now doing this.
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Neutral Networks
Wide open for research. Barnetts work shows that
in a formally defined class of (binary) fitness
landscapes full of NNs in a particular fashion,
best strategy is a population of size 11, with a
fixed number of mutations based on getting
expected proportion that are neutral as close as
possible to 1/e 37. Adrian Thompsons hardware
evolution supports this Extensions noisy fitness
evaluations ? Real valued genotypes?
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Gaia/Maximum entropy?
Relationship between Daisyworld models of
homeostasis, and Thermodynamic ideas that
- Systems try to organise themselves to
produce entropy as fast as possible. Cf. Kay and
Schneider, 4th Law of Thermodynamics. Organised
systems can dissipate junk entropy faster, and
( speculation) Life does it better than
anything else and hence should naturally occur (
given the right circumstances)
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Homeostasis
Ezequiels work on looking at issues of
homeostasis in minimally cognitive models seems
very important and interesting. As also does Jim
Stones work on ( roughly speaking) what
perceptual systems (eg ANNs) have to do in order
to sift out higher-level invariants from all the
noise. Roughly- (1) output of a system should
not fluctuate wildy (just echoing the noise is
pointless) But (2) Should not stay still it
should fluctuate over the long term if it is to
reflect real things happening in the world.
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Economy
So, Jim Stone points out that outputs of of
perceptual systems should minimise (Short Term
Variance) divided by (Long Term
Variance) Minimise STV/LTV where short/long refer
to appropriate time scales. This is one way of
ensuring that an output neuron is earning its
keep. Related to Ezequiels interpretation of
homeostasis keepng neurons activations in
the middle of their sigmoids
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A Speculation
If you evolve CTRNNs for an agent to do a task
(eg phototaxis) with an extra fitness factor
related to making sure each neuron earns its
keep e.g. Stones criteria, minimising
STV/LTV then you can hope to see homeostais
??? (variant on Ezequiels upside-down glasses
experiments)
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Alife lectures in Week 10

• In my absence, lectures will be same time/place
  Mon/Tue
• Monday Ezequiel Di Paolo, on Evolution of
  Communication
• Tuesday Eric Vaughan, an ODE Tutorial.
• Seminars will be replaced by ODE lab classes
  same times and groups, but in the Aut Sys Lab

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The End
time for more discussion ??