MAP · MOVER × PARTS
MERIT
Merit = score × simplicity. Best: the best robot so far. Mean: the average over all kinds on the map.
EVENTS
[?] WHAT HAPPENS HERE
Every robot is one circuit board — round, triangular, square or hexagonal, alone or slotted into
one or two more — with solar cells, one or two Tilden solar engines (a capacitor that charges in the
lamp light and fires a motor, an N20 or planetary gear motor with spokes, or a solenoid when its
trigger voltage is reached) and a few wires: legs, spikes or a rolling cage. The best are the simple
ones that move, stack and interlock and get up on each other by themselves. Each robot is tested with
a twin: dropped onto it four times (does it stay on top? how hard a sideways push does it hold —
friction alone holds about 0.35 g, more is shape), side by side under the lamp for 20 s (does one
climb or jump onto the other?), and alone for 30 s (how far does it get?).
Score = stack + 2 × climb + rise + 0.3 × touch + 0.5 × jump + move (rise: how far one lifts itself on the other; touch: how long they touch); merit = score × simplicity. Your browser keeps the
best of each kind in the map (MAP-Elites, Mouret & Clune 2015) and mutates them. A run starts
from designed robots — a hopper, a wheg walker and a twin wheg, laid out from physics
(designs.js) — then adds random ones. Physics, parts and sources:
engines/beam-v1/. The run is kept in this browser. [S] saves the selected robot for the
arena; [E] downloads it as JSON.