Evolving tensegrity sculptures

Software	An object-oriented language with good GUI features
Covers	Evolutionary computing, simple graphics, simple physics.
Skills Required	Programming, object-oriented design, interest in artificial intelligence, good understanding of Newtonian mechanics, not afraid of simple maths.
Challenge	Conceptual ??? Technical ??? Programming ????

Brief Description

The aim of the project is to develop a system that uses evolutionary computing techniques to create tensegrity sculptures. Ideally the system should display virtual sculptures on screen, and should produce descriptions of the sculptures that allow them to be built in the real world.

The project will involve having a way to represent candidate tensegrity structures in a computational representation that can be manipulated by an AI program, a means to modify candidate tensegrity structures into different ones, a way to evaluate candidate structures by calculating what happens to them - this might be done using Newtonian mechanics calculations implemented as part of the project, or by using a game engine, and a way to generate modifications using some evolutionary procedure.

Tensegrity is the construction of rigid structures that comprise rigid beams connected by flexible ropes that remain rigid when the structure is assemmbed, because the structure cannot change shape without stretching one or more of the ropes. The invention of tensegrity is credited to the artist Kenneth Snelson. The term was coined by Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s. Many small children including the proposer's own have tensegrity toys.

The use of evolutionary computing techniques offers the possibility to find more and more complicated tensegrity structures than people can easily dream up in their heads. These more complicated structures might include curved beams. One possible source of ideas for how to do this is genetic algorithms. Another possible source of ideas is shape grammars.

This project idea was inspired by this cool application of tensegrity to robotics, as well as by the various tensegrity sculptures the proposer has seen.

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