Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #05279



To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: Bob Shannon bshannon@tiac.net
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 12:40:45 -0400
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: Chaotic controllers


Jeremy Williams wrote:

> this seems pretty cool, I wonder if you took a colony of anys, and put
> them in a very basic RJP and put a food trough at one and and a shelter at
> the other, taking away most of the work the ants need to do to survive, if
> the ants would start to evolve over a couple years.

Probably not without competitive pressure from some other form of life.

Actually the observations of an ants behavior when placed in a RJP are missing
the ants most important survivial behavior. In fact, Tilden's rating of the garden ant
in Living Machines also makes this same major error.

If we watch an ant more carefully, either in its native environment or in a RJP, we will
see that a good deal of the ants behaviors are directed at keeping itself clean. An ants sensors
and mechanics take a great deal of maintenance. Feelers are preened, and joints dusted, etc.

This single behavior alone is vastly more complex than any BEAM behavior, and places the ants survival metric totally
off of Tiden's charts. It seems that Steven Bolt overlooked most of what that little ant was doing in his RJP, so it
appeared far less 'smart' than it really is.

> i wonder what it would
> turn out like. say maybe if thier brains got bored so they started to
> invent thier own entertainment? or if you put more than one colony you
> could get trade agreements, then currency, then government to take it away
> again =^) that would be cool. especially if you could survive long enough
> too see it evolve.

If they has time on their hands, they would probably start a war with each other.
Most ants wage war against their own kind, a very uncommon behavior in nature.



> >> > There is a strong and deterministic connection between the
> >> > environment and behavior of animals and even humans. The usual
> >> > example is the ant - a relatively simple piece of biological
> >> > machinery, which follows something like a dozen fixed rules. Put it
> >> > in a simple environment - like a Robot Jurassic Parc - and what it
> >> > does looks no more intelligent, capable or complex than the
> >> > behaviour of today's robots.

We need to look a bit closer to see just what that little ant is doing, and why
it is a survivable design where todays BEAM robots are not.

About 12 rules eh? As opposed to what, maybe 2 for a photovore?
Is one of those rules about keeping itself clean as carefully as they do?





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