Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory

I happened upon this site the other day. Not new but it’s pretty fun to play with. It uses a GA to evolve walking styles for some simple artificial skeleton models (a normal joint constrained human skelaton, a catepillar with no legs, and a drunk skelaton). The Java applet has a fairly nice interface to it - letting you control the population size, mutation rate, and animation and fitness-plotting settings. I wasn’t too impressed with the walking coordination but it was nonetheless quite amusing. (It could be that I wasn’t patient enough to let it evolve long enough or find the optimal settings) The project was developed by Andrew Dick while at Middlesex University UK.

It makes me wonder if gentic algorithms have been applied to physical therapy patients trying to regain muscle strength and control. MIT has developed a programmable robot to assist in this goal, and is especially suited for stroke victims. The robot speeds the recovery by applying greater resistance as a patient’s muscles develop.