Sept. 28 (Thursday) John Rieffel(Cornell)
Evolutionary Fabrication: the Co-Evolution of Form and Formation
Abstract:
Although Evolutionary Design has been used to automatically generate a wide variety of novel and creative objects such as circuits, robots, and satellite antennae, few of these designs are subsequently manufactured. In this talk I will argue that this "Fabrication Gap" is due to the fact that contemporary approaches focus more on the form of objects than on their formation. As evolved forms become more complex, their formation becomes increasingly difficult for both humans and computers to discover. The alternative which I propose is Evolutionary Fabrication, which circumvents the Fabrication Gap by evolving the formation of objects directly. I will show that this approach is capable of injecting the novelty and creativity associated with evolutionary approaches into the realm of fabrication, generating not just novel objects, but novel means of assembling those objects as well. Ultimately, the evolution of form and formation become fully intertwined when the language of assembly itself becomes subject to evolution, capable of discovering increasingly large sub-assemblies and adding them to its vocabulary. In this manner, Evolutionary Fabrication discovers both how to build objects and what to build them out of. Via this co-evolution of form and formation, Evolutionary Fabrication leads the way to systems which can move from broad specification to complete artifact without the need for further human intervention. This budding field of Fully Automated Design and Manufacture will have an impact on realms ranging from product design to planetary exploration.