(Disney Meets Darwin)

12 Improvements

Like the physics implementation, the motor control algorithm for these figures is rather simple and low-dimensional - which allows for fast computation and high animation rates - but greatly limits the gestural vocabularies of the figures.

The use of stimulus/response mechanisms and more versatile motor control would be a great improvement over the present scheme. Since the figures move their joints like clockwork - by constantly changing sine wave motors, set "at birth" - they cannot adapt individually: they are not reactive to their environments. This sets obvious limitations to their abilities to do funny things, like reacting to other figures and other objects in the environment. I plan to develop more versatile figures with reactivity to their environments, in future work. This would enable non periodic behaviors to emerge, tied to the changing environments within which the figures are situated.

13 Summary

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