Sung-Bae Cho & Geum-Beom Song - Evolving CAM-Brain to control a mobile robot
The idea of using trying to grow a useful network by use of local rules only is very interesting and has a clear parallel in nature. The use of a cellular automata is clever as this is a very clean expression of growing complexity through local rules alone, there can be no cheating.
Clever solution to the problem of continuous analogue input into binary state cells. Using multiple cells of different sensitivity probably mirrors nature’s own solution.
On the downside, unclear if this could scale up to more complex behaviour. What is reliability of re-growing an effective solution from the same parameters?
Wensch & Sommeijer – Parallel simulation of axon growth in the nervous system
I like the way they have made a very strong and detailed model based case for the role of the chemical agents secreted and diffusing causing the kind of axon structures seen in nature.
Downside – would be nice to see some photos of real axon bundles to compare results visually. The simulation is incredibly detailed, it would have been interesting to start eliminating some factors to see where breakdown occurs – how many of these are actually necessary for the behaviour/ morphology seen. It would also be useful to reduce the resolution of the computations, how small is the critical homogenous area “units” for computation. Is it a process that can only work by very small localised precision? The level of detail and computational expense associated seems to have prevented any evolution based exploration of the parameters.
Filed under: 1
