7 Aug ’07

Microbia

This is just too cool. I just returned from an exposition called 'Genesis' in the central museum of utrecht, and saw a short movie of two dutch filmmakers (Floris Kaayk and Sil van der Woerd). These two have been creating (fictional) nature documentaries of artificial lifeforms. These movies are called "The order Electrus" and "Metalosis Maligna" and are definitely worth watching.



Their website is http://www.microbia.nl/ , but their movies are also available on youtube. I'll link to them when I'm on a computer that can actually show Youtube movies ;).

More news from the exposition were the robots from Luc Steels (http://arti.vub.ac.be/~steels/), who build robots based on the feedback loop principle: information isn't necessarily stored inside the robot, but is 'accessible' to the robotic system through a simple interaction. The difference boils down to a common split in robots: the Japanese walker bots that calculate every millisecond of their walk, and the bots that sort of react on being out of balance, acceleration and the force the ground exerts on their legs. The latter don't plan their movements, but have learned how to respond to their sensory input, which has been trained to learn a pattern of responses that corresponds with walking. The latter is definitely the more biological solution.