Frog Artificial Life v1.0 20220115

Frog is an artificial life experimental project with the ultimate goal of creating simulated life forms with "self-aware expressions." The technical architecture is based on an artificial brain model proposed in 2002. This project will never end. It starts with simulating a simple life form, then frogs, dogs..., and ends with an artificial brain with "self-conscious expression", or in other words, ends with robots replacing humans. that day.

At present, its first preliminary goal is to create a true artificial life: Paramecium (note: basically completed). It must have the first four characteristics below

1. The brain structure is generated by a computer: the neural network is generated by a computer algorithm, but the computer algorithm is limited to simulating the environment and does not directly participate in building the neural network. It is as if nature is only responsible for killing unqualified lives and never actively participates. Design the brain.

2. Brain structure is heritable: Similar to biological DNA, computer-generated brain structures (neural networks) can be described by simple algorithm rules, and this algorithm rules can be compressed into shorter fragments for storage and participate in the next generation of grasshoppers. Worm construction.

Mutable brain structure: Algorithm rules can mutate. The brain structure of the next generation of paramecium is generally similar to that of the previous generation, but there are some mutations.

3. Adapt to the environment: Paramecium can survive in a simulated virtual environment. There are slight changes in the environment, it can adapt to the environment, and it survives from generation to generation and inherits the ability to adapt to this environment.

4. Use it or lose it: This is a hypothesis. For living things, there is a phenomenon that organs that are used more are prone to mutation (for example, chewing betel nut frequently is prone to oral cancer). There is reason to believe that this is not the case. It is an accidental phenomenon, but a useful function of organisms in the process of evolution, so that they can mutate more quickly to adapt to the environment, and it is likely that this mutation will affect the next generation through genetic cells.

This is a Java project, divided into three modules: Application, Env, and Frog: Application module: used for basic services such as project startup and shutdown. In Windows environment, you can use run.bat to start it to view the demonstration.

Env module: simulates a biological living area, using different shapes of graphic lattice to express and simulate food, natural enemies, obstacles and other objects. This virtual space is fully controlled by the programmer and will continue to become more and more beautiful as Frog's brain evolves. The more complex it is.

Frog: This is the main body of artificial life. It is currently named Frog. In fact, it can be called anything the same. It mainly has the following organs

1. Motor organ: Connected to motor neurons, it has only 4 movements: up, down, left, and right.

2. Eating organ: When the coordinates of Frog and food coincide, the food will be deleted from Env, and Frog's energy value will be increased accordingly, and Frog's eating sensory neurons will be activated. As time goes by, the energy will decrease, and the energy will be exhausted. Frog died.

3. Visual organ: This is part of the brain model. During the experiment, a neuron area in the brain was randomly selected as the visual area.

4. Brain organ: This is the problem that programmers want to solve, and it is also the ultimate goal we want to achieve. The generation of the brain model is generated by computer optimization and cyclic iterative evolution. However, this evolutionary algorithm must still be controlled by programmers and explored step by step. This is to prevent the virtual environment from being too complex and to prevent the brain model from not adapting to the environment. All living organisms were eliminated, causing the experiment to be interrupted and unable to continue.