Another step in Skynet's inevitable journey to self-awareness

'Borg' Computer Collective Designs NASA Space Antenna

Like a friendly, non-biological form of the Borg Collective of science fiction fame, 80 personal computers, using artificial intelligence (AI), have combined their silicon brains to quickly design a tiny, advanced space antenna.

If all goes well, three of these computer-designed space antennas will begin their trip into space in March 2006, when an L-1011 aircraft will take off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The airplane will drop a Pegasus XL rocket into the sky high above the Pacific Ocean. The rocket will ignite and carry three small Space Technology (ST5) satellites into orbit.
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"This is the first time an artificially evolved object will have flown in space," observed Jason Lohn, who led the project to design the antennas at NASA Ames Research Center, located in California's Silicon Valley.
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To design the ST5 space antenna, the computers started with random antenna designs, and through the evolutionary process, refined them. The computer system took about 10 hours to complete the initial antenna design process.

"The AI software examined millions of potential antenna designs before settling on a final one," said Lohn. The software did this much faster than any human being could do so under the same circumstances, according to Lohn. "Through a process patterned after Darwin's 'survival of the fittest,' the strongest designs survive and the less capable do not."

"We told the computer program what performance the antenna should have, and the computer simulated evolution, keeping the best antenna designs that approached what we asked for. Eventually, it zeroed in on something that met the desired specifications for the mission," Lohn said.