What if Eye...? Computationally Recreating Vision Evolution

Abstract

Vision systems in nature show remarkable diversity, from simple light-sensitive patches to complex camera eyes with lenses. While natural selection has produced these eyes through countless mutations over millions of years, they represent just one set of realized evolutionary paths. Testing hypotheses about how environmental pressures shaped eye evolution remains challenging since we cannot experimentally isolate individual factors. Computational evolution offers a way to systematically explore alternative trajectories. Here we show how environmental demands drive three fundamental aspects of visual evolution through an artificial evolution framework that co-evolves both physical eye structure and neural processing in embodied agents. First, we demonstrate computational evidence that task specific selection drives bifurcation in eye evolution - orientation tasks like navigation in a maze leads to distributed compound-type eyes while an object discrimination task leads to the emergence of high-acuity camera-type eyes. Second, we reveal how optical innovations like lenses naturally emerge to resolve fundamental tradeoffs between light collection and spatial precision. Third, we uncover systematic scaling laws between visual acuity and neural processing, showing how task complexity drives coordinated evolution of sensory and computational capabilities. Our work introduces a novel paradigm that illuminates evolutionary principles shaping vision by creating targeted single-player games where embodied agents must simultaneously evolve visual systems and learn complex behaviors. Through our unified genetic encoding framework, these embodied agents serve as next-generation hypothesis testing machines while providing a foundation for designing manufacturable bio-inspired vision systems. Website: http://eyes.mit.edu/