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The Nature of Code (Read 3294 times)
REAS
The Nature of Code
Apr 24th, 2005, 12:24am  
Have people seen the site for Dan Schiffman's Nature of Code class? Some tasty stuff, lots of examples covering autonomous agents, cellular automata, genetic algorithms...

http://stage.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/nature/

He's using the The Computational Beauty of Nature by Gary William Flake as the text. All the code is written for Processing 74 so most will work with the (BETA) 85+
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JAMESWW
Re: The Nature of Code
Reply #1 - Apr 24th, 2005, 9:57am  
Those autonomous agents are very endearing. This is a great resource for me. Thanks for the heads-up!
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rgovostes
Re: The Nature of Code
Reply #2 - Apr 24th, 2005, 4:20pm  
Yes, the evolving pathfinding applet is very entertaining. "My" record (without moving the goal) is 82... can anyone beat it Smiley
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TomC
Re: The Nature of Code
Reply #3 - Apr 25th, 2005, 12:43am  
The pathfinding applet is definitely cool.  If I understand it though (and I might not), it's evolving a flow map for guiding the creatures - a great way to get a cool-looking result, but not a very realistic way to simulate real animal behaviour.

The flow map is inherited - a bit like genetic memory - but do you know the route your parents took to school?

It would be cool to do a similar applet, but where the DNA provided guidance for responding to walls, and "seeking" the target.  Or maybe one where the target emitted a "smell" and the agents learned to follow that smell.  The results for the latter would be similar to Dan's applet I expect.
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Daniel Shiffman
Re: The Nature of Code
Reply #4 - Apr 26th, 2005, 3:53am  
Hey folks. . .

Casey, thanks for pointing people to the course site!  Over the summer, I'll be adding some more examples and porting all of the code to 85. . .

Tom, your analysis of the pathfinding applet is right -- these creatures have no real intelligence and understanding of their environment, just a memorized "vector field" telling them how to move about a space, which they pass down from generation to generation.  

In addition, this little applet is flawed in the sense that the fitness function for each "DNA" is based on the creature's proximity to the target after a certain amount of time passes.  But what if the map were a maze where the end was right back by the starting point?

Anyway, keep comments, suggestions, thoughts, etc. coming!  I'll be working on future examples and tutorials for next year. . .

Dan
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http://www.learningprocessing.com | http://www.shiffman.net | http://itp.nyu.edu
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Daniel Shiffman
Re: The Nature of Code
Reply #5 - May 25th, 2005, 9:26pm  
ITP's server is down for some maintenance, you can find the nature of code site here temporarily:

http://www.shiffman.net/itp/classes/
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http://www.learningprocessing.com | http://www.shiffman.net | http://itp.nyu.edu
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