Remember the OpenWorm Project that I wrote about a few years ago, a collaborative, open source attempt to construct an artificial life form from the cellular level to the point where it's able to have basic problem-solving abilities? The project (like the worm) has evolved since then, to the point where the creators have been invited to present their work to the Royal Society:
This meeting will bring together neuroscientists, physicists, and engineers to discuss advances in neural activity imaging, behaviour quantification, and multiscale simulations and how they are bringing the goal of whole-animal modelling at cellular resolution within reach.
If the group sounds vaguely familiar, it could be because its past and present fellows include obscure scientists such as Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking.
"We are super proud of this because starting as an open science/open source project as a couple of guys in a hangout being recognized by such an established organization is pretty massive for us," Open Worm co-founder Giovanni Idili tells me. "Also they'll publish an issue based exclusively on this meeting we are organizing so that's pretty exciting and dare I say unprecedented." (Maybe there's another legendary scientific body that's devoted attention to the first digital life form of its kind, but I'm guessing not.)
The Royal Society presentation happens next January. Meantime, says Giovanni, the worm keeps evolving:
The worm has become a robot, for one: "A lot of work has gone into building the actual robot and the plan is to start tuning the network soon to see if we can replicate some interesting real worm behaviors even with simplified neuronal models. Also we are super excited about possibly doing a worm robot kit in the future! (Shane Gingell and Tom Portegys are the main guys working on this)." (As above.)
Sibernetic, the physics engine created to simulate the worm's body, "keeps improving and being able to model the movement of the worm under different conditions... Latest Sibernetic results showing both swimming and crawling behaviour in the same simulation + showing omega turns are possible with the worm body and physics engine we built custom for openworm (Andrey Palyanov and Sergey Khayrulin are the masterminds behind this)."
Meanwhile, he adds, "a lot of work is happening behind the scenes in the community to tune muscles models to behave like real worm muscles - there is an internal race right now to integrate these latest models (in terms of realistic behavior) and the neuronal models with the Sibernetic engine. This is the next big milestone really: have the motor circuits (a subset of neurons + muscle models) drive behavior in Sibernetic now that we know the engine and the body we built can produce real worm-like behaviors."
Looks like the Royal Society, the world's oldest organization devoted to the study of natural science, will soon get to see an impressive simulation of virtual life.
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