Generative Bridge Design: an experiment in C++ to generate, evaluate, and evolve simple bridges as modeled by pin-beam truss structures.
We wanted to automate part of the bridge generation process. What an experienced engineer can do in three tries, a genetic algorithm can do in 100,000. We’ve built a system to simulate a bridge as a truss structure in real time. It solves indeterminate and determinate truss systems using gradient descent. We’ve built a way to distinguish and sort bridges based on the amount of stress on their beams. We then used this environment to produce thousands of bridges, borrow from the strongest ones, and produce realistic bridge structures at the end of several generations.
Thuc Tran, David Papp, Max Schommer, Joseph Lee
Required packages (tested on Ubuntu 14.04):
- g++
- build-essential
- freeglut3-dev
For a complete install on ubuntu, run:
sudo apt-get install -y g++ build-essential freeglut3-dev
To run, type make in the top directory.
Afterwhich, you can run the program with:
./draw
And wait as you see the bridge start to evolve!