Events and FAQ 

Framsticks-related events

  • April 21, 1998: Demonstration on a DEMO session of European machine learning conference, Chemnitz, Germany; a paper.
  • November 1998: Netherlandish CD-Magazine, C'TROM 18 – demo movies and pictures, project description.
  • November 17, 1998: CALResCo awards this site as one of the best visual Artificial Life resources available on the web.
  • March 1999: Chip and Chip CD Polish edition (3/99) – an article, WWW site, application.
  • March 17, 1999: an interview for Radio BIS (Poland) – artificial intellgence and artificial life.
  • March 1999: an interview for Reporter (Poland) – artificial life and artificial intellgence.
  • May 25-28, 1999: Polish conference "Evolutionary Algorithms and Global Optimization" (a paper).
  • September 13-17, 1999: Poster, demonstration and paper in the 5th European Conference on Artificial Life, Lausanne, Switzerland. M. Komosinski awarded for the outstanding work in the field of Artificial Life.
  • September 1999: Interview for L'Hebdo, No. 38/99 (Internet version of the article – in French – available here).
  • October 15, 1999: An open lecture/presentation/demo on "Evolutionary Algorithms and Simulations of Life", Poznan Univ. Tech., Poland.
  • November 19, 1999: Framsticks presentation at the LEGO Lab, Aarhus, Denmark.
  • January 7 and 14, 2000: Interviews/Articles in a Polish newspaper, Glos Wielkopolski.
  • February 2000: Interview for RMF FM radio.
  • April 11-14, 2000: INFOSYSTEM 2000 presentation. Country-distributed evolution, remote ONYX2 graphical workstation visualization (OpenGL), parallel rendering.
  • June-July 2000: Evolutionary Art Exhibition "Darwin's coach", Geneva. Framsticks presentation.
  • July 2000: Framsticks Experimentation Center prototype.
  • July 2000: Presentation at the 2nd International Conference on Virtual Worlds, Paris, France. A paper.
  • August 2000: Presentation at the 7th International Conference on Artificial Life, Portland, USA. A paper.
  • October 11-14, 2000: Presentation at the sgi2000: SGI Users' Conference, Krakow, Poland. Country-distributed evolution, remote ONYX2 graphical workstation visualization (OpenGL).
  • December 1-2, 2000: TheoLab – Research Unit for Structure Dynamics and the Evolution of Systems, Jena, Germany. Presentation on the workshop "Evolution and Neural Control of Autonomous Systems".
  • December 4, 2000: Seminar at the Chair of Systems Analysis, Department of Computer Science, University of Dortmund, Germany.
  • May 14-18, 2001: Seminar at the meeting "Complexity-Unifying Themes for the Sciences and New Frontiers for Mathematics" of Santa Fe Institute for the Sciences of Complexity (SFI) and Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences (MPI). Leipzig, Germany.
  • September 10-14, 2001: Presentation and paper on the 6th European Conference on Artificial Life, Prague, Czech Republic.
  • November 13/14, 2001: Framsticks in the Polish TV station, TVN. See snapshots.
  • December 2001: Two papers: for Artificial Life Journal and for Theory in Biosciences.
  • February 2002: Article in Software 2.0 (a computer magazine) about Alife, AI, and Framsticks.
  • April/May 2002: Articles/news in internet information services: PAP, Chip, WP, ONET. Interviews for radio: III P.R., TOK FM, Radio Krakow. Television: WTK.
  • March 2003: "Data Ecologies" workshop in Austria, "the Framsticks day".
  • September 2003: an interview for the Chip magazine.
  • September 2003: International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Natural Computing, North Carolina, USA. A paper and presentation.
  • March 2004: An article for the "Scientific American" Polish edition.
  • July 2004: European Framsticks summer school in Lodz, Poland.
  • February 2005: Framsticks and the Framsticks deathmatch experiment described in the "Software 2.0 Extra" magazine.
  • June 2005: Framsticks chapter in the Artificial Life Models in Software book.
  • November 2005: Vector eye and sensory-motor coordination experiments presented on the cognitive science conference.
  • August-October 2006: Invited lectures at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA.
  • September 2006: Interview for biota.org group.
  • November 2006: A paper introducing biologically-inspired sensory-motor coordination model, KES 2006: International Conf. on Knowledge-Based & Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems, Bournemouth, UK.
  • December 2006: Framsticks workshop in Poznan, Poland.
  • April 2007: Invited lecture at the Robots Festival, Poznan, Poland.
  • See more events...

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Who can benefit from using the program/Why is it useful for me?
  • The program is a very good educational tool. As most of the information needed to use the program is available on these pages, the software will let you experiment with complex stick structures ("alive" or not), complex neural networks and a three-dimensional, water and land simulation. The application has a special interface that you will quickly learn and use to build structures, test them, evolve, and improve. If you study computer science, biology, robotics, physics, mechanics, etc., the program may be a nice way of learning various topics. If you are a scientist, you may want to explore the capabilities of the software and use them in a more advanced way (custom scripts and experiments). If you are interested in computer graphics, you can make wonderful movies and pictures. You can also use our program to compete/play with other users (for example, who will grow or design a faster or stronger creature?) and for entertainment.
    You can also take part in forum discussions to seek help or express your ideas.
  • How can I contribute?
  • You can conduct lots of experiments on your own, from very simple (speed-oriented) to very sophisticated with unpredictable results (spontaneous/open-ended evolutions). You can send us your creatures, and you can also take part in the challenges (see here, you may be rewarded!). You can also design your own 3D visualization styles, create your own experiments, and help us with translation of the web pages. Or develop helper Framsticks software. If you are interested, please contact us.
  • Does this project have any practical applications?
  • The project in its current form is not used in industry. However, every technique used in Framsticks has lots of applications: evolutionary algorithms, optimization methods, neural networks, finite element method and the mechanic simulation etc. This research can be useful for people working in computer science, robotics, biology, physics and many other scientists, and for non-professionals too. The program can be useful for all who are interested in any of the techniques used, also within a "to learn by playing" approach.
    The most important goal is to use this program to perform various evolutionary experiments in a complex environment. The study of achieved results helps understand better evolutionary mechanisms and yields interesting conclusions concerning behavior and structure of emerging creatures.
  • Why is the program in English only?
  • Web site translation is very time-consuming. Synchronization of continuous (and numerous!) corrections is a never-ending work. English is the most common scientific language, that is why it was chosen.
  • How long does one evolution take?
  • A speed-oriented evolution without speciation is relatively short. Assuming that the process begins with no additional knowledge (starts with a single, simplest organism genotype), the methods of movement are usually discovered after several minutes. After a few hours, creatures are quite efficient in locomotion. More sophisticated evolutions (e.g. spontaneous/open-ended) take longer. Of course, it is crucial to adjust parameters properly in order to efficiently use the simulation time.
  • What about philosophy? How such experiments can inspire me to philosophical considerations?
  • For a start, think about the following hypothesis (by M.K.):
    Once upon a time, there was a mighty civilization. It was so old that it did not remember its own origins. Over time, it became more and more powerful, and could better understand the world in which it existed. It nearly annihilated itself many times, because its knowledge was greater than the ability to use it for its own good. Ultimately however, it managed to develop policies that ensured stable development and guaranteed safety of its own existence.

    This civilization has always tried to understand the purpose and meaning of the existence of the universe and of itself. When it has reached a stage of development where it dispersed and reunited with its world, it decided to create a vast number of different worlds believing that this diversity would give rise to new, original ideas explaining the cause and the meaning of existence of the old world. It was also a way to explore possible paths and scenarios of the past (the only way the civilization could indirectly learn about its history and its place in the cloud of probability) and possible futures. Civilizations emerging and developing in these worlds finally began to produce their own sub-worlds, and these, in turn, produced their own sub-worlds, this way forming a series of worlds nested one in the other. They died and flourished, inventing infinity of ideas, concepts and theories, questions and answers.
    Where is our place in this story? Think about it, and then read the “Nesting” story.

  • I would like to add a link to your project from my web pages.
  • Use http://www.framsticks.com/
    You can add a picture:
http://www.framsticks.com/files/common/artlife-evol.gif
http://www.framsticks.com/files/common/artlife-mini.gif
http://www.framsticks.com/files/common/artlife-midi.gif
http://www.framsticks.com/files/common/artlife.gif
http://www.framsticks.com/files/common/artlife-maxi.gif


If you need very high-quality graphical materials concerning this project (for printing, video, etc.), do contact us.