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The Lucy Project

Lucy was a pure research project to develop some novel theories about the fundamental operating principles of the brain. She was not an end in herself, but rather a test bed for exploring ideas that will have wide-ranging applications in other areas.

The general aim was for Lucy to develop like a baby, starting out with no knowledge or skills and working everything out for herself via a mixture of growth and learning. She was not "programmed" to do anything. Instead, she contains a theoretical model of the brain, built from tens of thousands of virtual neurons, which combine to form a general-purpose learning machine. She was never very smart, but she was generating new insights about both natural life and future intelligent technology.

The Lucy project began in 1999 but was shelved in 2006 due to lack of funds. The following pages archive the project for posterity.

	Lucy was funded during 2003 by the incredibly nice people at NESTA.
	We'd also like to record our gratitude to Nottingham High School for Boys, for their kind donation