(Sexual Swimmers)
8 Future Work
The inclusion of an organism's articulated
motion dynamics in a spatial evolutionary model
suggests the possibility of more emergent complexity
and realism in artificial life simulations. This could
be achieved to a greater extent than shown here by combining
the impressive results of creatures evolved "a la Sims",
within "Yaeger worlds", to generate virtual ecosystems in
which complex emergent behavior can be witnessed on many
scales, from the global interactions of species populations
down to the wiggling of a tail. A more open-ended genotype
representation, such as accomplished with genetic programming,
would allow much more novelty to emerge within the swimmer world.
Also, sexual selection could be extended to include
preferences for qualities of motion and morphology.
Observing the tradeoffs and compromises between "sexiness"
and efficient swimming could make for an interesting study.
A strong motivation in this project is to help bring
the knowledge and excitement of this type of work into the
realm of non-specialists, through instructional and
inspirational interactive media. Future development in
this regard is in the works.
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