DEEPER: Discovery and Exploitation of Emergent Physics through Evolutionary Refinement

Abstract : The DEEPER project aims to see if artificial evolution can create entirely new technologies, such as transistor-less circuits for sophisticated technological applications. The project is likely to have high impact in basic science. Using artificial evolution to explore "bottom-up" may lead to devices with significant advantages in size/weight ratio, fault tolerance, radiation tolerance, and speed of response. The project objectives are as follows: (1) to build and test an intrinsic evolution platform (evolvable motherboard), (2) to investigate evolving circuits using radiation-damaged silicon, (3) to investigate evolving circuits/information processors in liquid crystal, and (4) to investigate other novel materials that are field configurable and that may support artificial intrinsic evolution. The authors note that, with the success of the apparent evolution in liquid crystals and disruption of moving institutions, they have not had the time to investigate radiation-damaged components and their behavior under evolution. Following this status report is a paper entitled "Evolution in materio: A Tone Discriminator in Liquid Crystal." The abstract for this paper reads as follows: Intrinsic evolution is often limited to using standard electronic components as the media for problem solving. It has been argued that because such components are human designed and intentionally have predictable responses, they may not be the optimal medium to use when trying to get a naturally inspired search technique to solve a problem. Evolution has been demonstrated as capable of exploiting the physical properties of material to form solutions. However, by giving evolution only conventional components, researchers may be limiting themselves to solving certain problems. Using liquid crystal as the evolution substrate, the authors demonstrate that it is possible to evolve systems, including a tone discriminator, in materio. (20 figures, 16 refs.)