Friday, 28 January 2011

Genetic Algorithm

This kinda thing really interests me. Evolution. Of a computer system. Wow. Evolution / adaptation is an amazing accomplishment, and we all know computers can simulate pretty much any process. What better process to simulate than evolution.

I found this site where you watch the computer try to evolve a car to traverse a track. It is pretty cool. The computer beings by creating 20 random cars, which are 8 triangles with their points at the centre and 2 wheels on hydraulics. You will see they are all one colour and most likely they will all fail real bad.

Then at each generation the cars swap pieces to form the next generation. If you have set the mutation high, you may also see some pieces changing shape.

Somehow, the computer uses the distance travelled to find the best parts and then combines that into the next generation. This process is call natural selection. Pretty sweet stuff. This one has been left going for a while.


You can see sometimes that the natural selection process along with the mutation often forms a worse car. This event occurs in real life, often when the weak that are left behind have the most likely chance of survival and so the weak take over due to pure numbers.

I may do something similar to this as a future project. We shall see.
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30 comments:

  1. Anonymous28 January 2011 at 14:02

    This game is pretty fun, very challenging.

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  2. Doo28 January 2011 at 15:18

    Kinda reminds me of that bike game :)

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  3. Blops Killer28 January 2011 at 15:25

    I tried it but whenever my cars made a bunch of good shapes they all of a sudden go back to derp mode. What am I doing wrong?

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  4. Unknown28 January 2011 at 16:04

    It's not really a game. It's more a simulation. You sit and watch it evolve. I just liked the concept of the game.
    If you set the mutation really high then they just tend to go full retard. Which kinda makes sense. Wait until you have something that could be right then turn it down really low and natural selection should take over.

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  5. Chris28 January 2011 at 16:20

    Looks interesting. Will follow.

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  6. Isaac28 January 2011 at 16:51

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  7. Anonymous28 January 2011 at 18:09

    This game is so weird. I don't understand the mutation rate and there's almost no control to it. I don't see how it's so interesting.

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  8. BlahCooCooBlah29 January 2011 at 07:16

    If you can do that, you should also run for president lol

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  9. Toast Burnt29 January 2011 at 11:29

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  10. ec9229 January 2011 at 13:09

    Pretty cool, kindareminds me of linerider and trials.

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  11. Unknown29 January 2011 at 15:06

    Better version of this thingy here http://www.boxcar2d.com/index.html

    Some more options and explanation of what's going on

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  12. jonwinters29 January 2011 at 19:41

    simulations make me happy. i thought it was like a game...

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  13. More Ducks30 January 2011 at 07:45

    I've been playing this game almost everyday since I found out about it.

    So addicting.................

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  14. Delthra Phicorn30 January 2011 at 09:57

    Pretty cool, and they come out looking like animals after a few generations.

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  15. Arcita30 January 2011 at 12:56

    pretty awesome man. nice blog. followed. hit me back

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  16. D30 January 2011 at 20:26

    I love this program too. Also, I like the layout of this blog of yours.

    I guess you can't call it a "game" as you don't really get to play along. I've been running it for over a day, it's on generation 28, and my longest travel is still around 225.

    pretty weak.

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  17. Icky Ray30 January 2011 at 20:27

    Good stuff, man..

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  18. Frisky Bacon30 January 2011 at 21:02

    wow lovely blog. very time consuming though =)

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  19. jake729131 January 2011 at 09:26

    I have seen this everywhere and have yet to try it
    I guess i am going to have to now
    following now also

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  20. Brandon31 January 2011 at 09:33

    This is kinda cool. I took a couple of classes in ai and game design. We didn't get too much into genetic algorithms. It was mostly combinatorial search and the like. I wonder how difficult it would be to code something like this.

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  21. Kai Drakken31 January 2011 at 09:40

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  22. grace31 January 2011 at 09:43

    ive played a game similar to this never could figure it out

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  23. Cindir1331 January 2011 at 10:04

    That is friggin cool!

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  24. Alexander Stark31 January 2011 at 10:41

    I remember such a game, but it was loong ago, back in the times of the C64 ... never had/played it, though, maybe it was just for Amiga ...

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  25. Tsipise31 January 2011 at 12:09

    LOL i've been playing this the past week, up to over 500 generations. It's interesting. Though boring, not much interaction.

    Following.

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  26. Robots_ftw1 February 2011 at 09:24

    <3 this game,
    im learning about this kind of stuff at uni atm (robotics degree) and its really awesome :P

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  27. thegoldenchild1 February 2011 at 13:14

    mind=educated

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  28. Luxury Diamond2 February 2011 at 03:55

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  29. Anonymous2 February 2011 at 19:33

    Problem AI?

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  30. onegin7 February 2011 at 15:53

    I fuking LOVE DERP car, ths is one of the best online games ever


    nice blog! walk the sourdin!
    - monitoring

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