Re: Biomechanical evolution of vertebrate evolution

Definitely cool.... Almost looks like deer or elk....

EXTREMELY COOL!!!

BUT...i fail to see the evolution part... A super piece of machinery
created by someone that can move and maintain it's balance. Similar to
you/me. Created by someone (God) that can walk about and maintain balance.

May I humbly recommend a book that will explain the evolution in this
demonstration? "Out of Control" by Kevin Kelly[1]. Mr. Kelly founded Wired
magazine (Wirt recently informed me that he is also a family member of the
Absolut Vodka empire.) The book actually has a chapter of man's efforts to
build a machine that can walk. One of the first attempts was a "god" attempt
developed by Carnegie-Mellon called Ambler. It was a big machine with six
legs. It would take about a day to walk across the courtyard. Why so slow? Its
brain, which was so big it had to remain on the ground separate from the rest
of the beast, spent most of its time determining the topology and calculating
the next best step. The brain looked at all inputs and every possible outcome
and tried to control EVERYTHING in a "god"-like manner.

Meanwhile, an MIT professor and Australian named Rodney Brooks wrote a book
called "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control". The idea was to create a machine that
can walk by decentralizing the intelligence. Instead of making a really big
brain, he made legs that reacted to certain events. He created a six-legged
machine and programmed each leg separately. When one leg goes up, others know
to push back. The one that's up knows to move down, etc. With the right
sensors and feedback, he built a very stupid machine that walked like a big
roach. The simple rules were so good that if you pulled off a single leg, it
would rebalance itself and continue to walk - much like we saw the big dog do
on the ice in the YouTube clip but he did this in 1990.

The point of the book is that simple well-tuned systems can combine to form
more complex systems. After eighteen years the rules that made the six-legged
"roach" walk became good enough to make a four-legged "big dog" walk. How much
longer will it take to figure out the rules to make a bipedal walking machine?
All without a brain? If you consider how little we think about each and every
muscle while we walk it's eerily similar.

The book contains many more examples of self-ordering systems. IMHO, if I were
like God, this is exactly how I would create the world.

Mark W.

1. http://www.amazon.com/Out-Control-Biology-Machines-Economic/dp/0201483408

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