About Evolvable Hardware¶
Our Mission¶
Our mission is to revive, advance, and share FPGA-intrinsic analog evolvable hardware research. In the early 2000s, the field largely moved away from its original analog roots after the tools that made bitstream-level experiments possible were discontinued. We set out to understand why this promising vein of research was abandoned, recreate its seminal results on modern hardware, push the science forward, and build a community around it. This website serves as a focal point for communicating projects, connecting researchers, and targeting new and promising directions.
Our Design Philosophy¶
We are keeping this project completely open-source to aid in the further development and continuity of the particular domain of research. All code is available at github.com/evolvablehardware. Like most open-source projects, it is constantly under development. We welcome any and all levels of developers, engineers, researchers that are interested in making contributions to the research, be it testing, debugging, feature additions, new experiment ideas, novel hardware, and general criticisms.
Our History¶
Since the turn of the century, evolvable hardware research began migrating into many different directions away from the initial FPGA-intrinsic analog method. The excitement for this field of research was a result of the prospect of using evolutionary search to create analog circuits - a significant engineering challenge.
Watch the Summary Video¶
Want the short version of our mission and early results? Watch the twenty minute presentation prepared for ALIFE 2021.
Getting Involved¶
The Evolvable Hardware community is growing! Join the movement, participate in the research, or hack the gibson! Whether you're interested in the science, engineering, or tinkering, you're welcome here!