Environmental Effects on Minimal Behaviors in the Minimat World
Environmental Effects on Minimal Behaviors in the Minimat World
复制标题
环境对极小世界中极小行为的影响
作者：
P. Todd;H. Yanco
环境的结构影响着在其中进化的生物体的行为，如何描述这种结构，如何解释和预测其行为后果？我们的目标是通过模拟具有不同结构的简单环境中非常简单的生物体的进化来建立这些问题的初步答案。我们的人造生物，被称为“最小机器人“，既没有传感器也没有记忆，只是根据遗传的概率分布在移动、进食、繁殖和坐下等动作中进行选择。我们的模拟环境只包含食物（和多个最小值），并根据它们的空间和时间食物密度以及食物出现的斑块来构造。这些环境参数的变化以不同的方式影响极小世界的演化行为，这三个参数在描述极小世界时都很重要。进化中最有用的行为策略之一是“循环”运动，它允许极小值尽管它们缺乏内部状态使它们的行为与环境的时间（和空间）结构相匹配。最终我们发现，极小个体通过其个体行为构建自身的环境，使得研究全局环境结构对个体行为的影响变得更加复杂。
The structure of an environment affects the behaviors of the organisms that have evolved in it. How is that structure to be described, and how can its behavioral consequences be explained and predicted? We aim to establish initial answers to these questions by simulating the evolution of very simple organisms in simple environments with different structures. Our artificial creatures, called "minimats, "have neither sensors nor memory and behave solely by picking amongst the actions of moving, eating, reproducing, and sitting, according to an inherited probability distribution. Our simulated environments contain only food (and multiple minimats) and are structured in terms of their spatial and temporal food density and the patchiness with which the food appears. Changes in these environmental parameters affect the evolved behaviors of minimats in different ways, and all three parameters are of importance in describing the minimat world. One of the most useful behavioral strategies that evolves is "looping" movement, which allows minimats-despite their lack of internal state—to match their behavior to the temporal (and spatial) structure of their environment. Ultimately we find that minimats construct their own environments through their individual behaviors, making the study of the impact of global environment structure on individual behavior much more complex.