Hummingbird is an AI I've been working on that learns how to fly a ship on its own. Starting with the engines, which try to determine a force to keep themselves afloat. (at a particular altitude) Then it uses a stabilizer to manage the ship over all. Then the stabilizer will reduce and strengthen the engines at various positions to tilt and move the ship to target locations.
Additionally, I felt inspired by
http://BoxCar2D.com, which creates cars from random geometric shapes and attempts to drive them through random terrains. Its travelling is simply based on spinning wheels that allow the vehicle to progress on a terrain. A difference between our AI's, is that Box Car looks at the creation of the the vehicle, while Hummingbird looks at the control of the vehicle. Here is an example of BoxCar2d:
I found Box Car almost mesmerizing, as you watch it randomly construct vehicles and try to get farther and farther with them. I intend Hummingbird to also have this mesmerizing feel. So far, its ship generation has been getting there, but it needs work still.
I've been working on raising community interest by running a kickstarter. Keep in mind that this is still being shaped. There are some basic pieces, but the end goal is not complete yet. The kick starter has been 100% funded as of yet, and completes in 2 days from this posting.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1667690760/creating-a-3d-flying-version-of-boxcar2d/
At present, one of the difficulties I'm facing is aligning the parts of the ships, so my next test scenes will be focused on improving the ship construction dynamics, so the ships are less of blobs, and begin taking on more meaningful shapes.