Hannah Cai—Looking Outwards-06

This simulation, created with Processing, utilizes randomness in simulating evolution. In each “generation,” 1000 creatures are created and the 500 that “walk” the furthest distance forward survive; new creatures are generated based on the survivors, and so on. I thought this was a fun and interesting application of randomness. Some of the early creatures are really derpy and funny, which is cute. But the really cool thing is seeing how much the creatures adapt after a couple of generations, and how certain “species” eventually dominate, ending up with one best optimized model. Since randomness is inherent in many parts of our everyday lives, it makes sense that randomness in computation, especially in experiments like this, can be very useful. I can see this type of prototyping being used in developing robot motion, finding the most aerodynamic shape for a plane, etc.