This is just plain eerie. (from Discover Magazine, via Gizmodo)

"We set up a situation common in nature - foraging with uncertainty," Floreano says. "You have to find food, but you don't know what food is; if you eat poison, you die." Four different types of colonies of robots were allowed to eat, reproduce, and expire.

By the 50th generation, the robots had learned to communicate - lighting up, in three out of four colonies, to alert the others when they'd found food or poison. The fourth colony sometimes evolved "cheater" robots instead, which would light up to tell the others that the poison was food, while they themselves rolled over to the food source and chowed down without emitting so much as a blink.

Some robots, though, were veritable heroes. They signaled danger and died to save other robots. "Sometimes," Floreano says, "you see that in nature - an animal that emits a cry when it sees a predator; it gets eaten, and the others get away - but I never expected to see this in robots."

Posted by Michael at January 19, 2008 12:34 PM