Robot 'mother' builds babies that can evolve on their own

[Ichingcarpenter]

Scientists have created a ‘mother’ robot that can build babies out of mechanised blocks, and then create new ones that evolve from the previous generation.

The findings show that robots could be able to evolve on their own, in the same way that animals and humans have. Like biological evolution, the robots mother could look out for the best traits in her children, and then use those to improve the following generations of robots.

In five different experiments, robot set the mother — which looks like a big robotic arm — to work building generations of ten different children. They were built out of small plastic cubes with motors inside.


The experiments found that those baby robots passed down all of their best traits. The last generation of children could perform tasks twice as quickly as the first, according to the results posted in the journal PLOS One.

Each of the robots carries a “genome”, made up of different genes, like humans do. As the generations were built, they passed them down and they mutated and cross over, deleting and merging genes to choose the most effective.


http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/robot-mother-builds-babies-that-can-evolve-on-their-own-10453196.html



Picture of mother robot









I mean the mother robot in this story

[Xipe Totec]

1. Next step - 3-D imprinting nt

[Kip Humphrey]

2. And so it begins...

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. How IBM's new 7nm chip busts Moore's Law, changes future of computing

If we were to think about electronic devices as molecules, the semiconductor would be the atom, and changes to these building blocks often have huge implications for the future of technology as a whole.

On Thursday, July 9, 2015, IBM Research announced the production of a 7nm node test chips with working transistors. IBM, Samsung, GlobalFoundries, and SUNY Polytechnic Institute's Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (SUNY Poly CNSE) all participated in the development of the technology, which could enable up to 20 billion transistors on a chip the size of a human fingernail.


IBM processors built at 7nm will be four times more powerful with up to 20bn transistors squeezed onto a single chip

The last major chip breakthrough was in making 14nm transistors, and doubts were raised about whether silicon-based processors could get much smaller due to the physics of atom sizes and the microscopic scale.

A strand of DNA is 2.5nm wide.


http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/09/moores-law-new-chips-ibm-7nm

[Javaman]

4. I'm confused...

if a robot mother can build babies, why then does she need to build more to create an "evolution" change?

why can't she just upgrade the babies?

[Thor_MN]

7. Because that wouldn't help ignore that it isn't real evolution.

The "babies" can't grow up and become "mothers' that create "babies". This is no different than Version 2.0 or 1.1 being better or having more features than version 1.0

In all likelihood the first generation "babies" were disassembled to create the later "generations." But that doesn't fit trying to generate sensationalism by suggesting that "robots are evolving".

[Bonobo]

8. Quite correct. nt

[lastlib]

5. GORT!

Klaatu! Barada! Nikto!

Klaatu! Barada! Nikto!

[progressoid]

6. Bring on the cylons!