A system in which soft robots “evolve” to walk or climb

I'm a bit surprised nobody mentioned Karl Sims Evolved Virtual Creatures yet (https://karlsims.com/evolved-virtual-creatures.html).

I don't think it's right to computer simulations "robots".

Very cool! It might be hard to imagine applications for this, but one could be Xenobots, which are soft robots made from living cells.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/science/xenobots-robots-f...

I remember "playing" BoxCar2D[1] for hours as a kid, unfortunately Flash has done away with it. Looks like there have been some JS-based spiritual successors though[2].

1. http://boxcar2d.com/

2. https://rednuht.org/genetic_cars_2/

Reminds me of this “evolution simulator” series a YouTuber made years ago: https://youtu.be/GOFws_hhZs8

Fabulous animations, I hope this means we're close to applying these genetic algorithm techniques to soft robots that we can actually build.

Archive link: https://archive.md/F9ehg

I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.