lateness

[gfish]

Random idea: Set up kiosks selling cupcakes with frosting 3D printers. Let people upload their own designs and all that, of course. But more sexily, have a random design program that prints out general stock for impulse purchases. Put a barcode on the bottom of each one, so you can track how quickly it sells. Use this feedback to evolve the designs into the most attractive cupcakes possible.

Comments

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

I love it!

[dymaxion.livejournal.com]

s/most attractive/best selling/. Markets are not a proxy for anything except marketability.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

I get the impression that the current cupcake craze is concerned more with flavor than design, but knock yourself out.

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

As with any use case for evolutionary computation, representation matters a lot. What space of possible cupcakes will you be using? I think the threshold for people to decide to buy a cupcake is too high for this to work, too — you're mainly going to discover that people don't buy pixel-noise cupcakes at all, and then the experiment's over because you don't get any more data. Unless people do buy them, in which case people are different enough that I don't think you're going to find a reliable gradient.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

If there is some rudimentary graphics editing software and a way to upload pictures and posterize them, you can start out letting people feed you pictures that will sell in quantities of one. You might be able to use that as a seed.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Given the nature of the material and how low-end 3D printers tend to work, I was assuming a vector representation for the frosting designs. CNC piping, basically.