From jokaydia: Exploring Virtual Worlds and Games in Education

Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life Projects

The built in building and scripting tools in Second Life allow for a range of experiments in creating artificially intelligent bots and objects. It can also be used to explore biologies and ecologies.

Explore the projects below or Return to the Educational Uses of Second Life Homepage.

Ant Harvesting Simulation

Created in by Tectonic Nabob for a class on Simulation of Biology at Elon University's Elon Island, the Ant Harvesting Simulation was designed to explore emergence. A small group of virtual ants were programmed to seek out and find food and then recruit other ants to gather the food and return it to the nest.

"'The behavior is arguably emergent,' says Tectonic Nabob, 'because the ants only interact locally and follow local state-based rules, yet they end up working together to harvest food. In general, emergence is when complex global behavior arises from simple, local rules, and this simulation has some of those properties.'"

To find out more, watch the YouTube video - Ants in Second Life or read more in the article - New World Notes: Ant Farm or read more on Boing Boing: Virtual ants simulated in Second Life

Island of Svarga

Created by Laukosargas Svarog's, the Island of Svarga is a fully-functional artificial ecology system. Everything - including plants, flowers, bugs and birds - is actually growing and replicating by itself, complete with a simulated weather system. Visitors who return will find the space changes with time, offering some interesting educational opportunities for teachers of environmental science, biology, and ecology.

The Islands of Svarga includes a number of artificial life features including:

• Scripted clouds roam the sim and provide occassional rain
• The sun measured by it's position and the amount of SL cloud density and effects the amount of growth
• Scripted bees fly between fertile flowers distributing "pollen" which contains "genes" describing the plant it belongs to
• Visitors can feed the Island's birds with seed that you can buy at the seed vendors
• Trees are grown from seeds to mature, become fertile and occasionally flower
• A wide range of flower types grow from seed and are pollinated by the bees. Each flower species requires a different kind of habitat
• Invisible markers designate habitat areas such as "shady", "boggy", "wet" etc. Some plants can only grow in a certain place and they use these markers to find the places

The Island of Svarga was placed up for sale by its creator in December 2008 and is currently not accessible via the Second Life map, although appears still to exist.

For further information view Pathfinder Linden's screenshots on Flickr, watch a fly-thru video of Svarga on Youtube, read an overview - New World Notes: GOD GAME or read an update post - 'Where Did Svarga Go?'.

A Working Turing Machine

Created by Dr. Kenneth G. Schweller and his students, and displayed at Dr Schweller's classroom on Buena Vista University Island in Second Life (SLurl), the Turing Machine is a working model which has been setup to allow visitors to learn about this important concept in computation and computability.

The virtual version of the Turing machine is a demonstration of the concept, with signs and notecards to illustrate the concept and provide visitors with further information. Visitors can also write and run their own programs, by creating a notecard which includes text that follows the format of the programs on display.

The space also includes a number of other experiments undertaken by Dr Schweller and his students including the Perceptron, a chat bot which is used to interact with the Turing machine and a virtual model of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer - the first electronic digital computing device.

For further information, visit Dr Schweller's website where he has documented his Second Life projects.