The paper describing this project is currently being developed in Overleaf: https://www.overleaf.com/read/mhjzhczdstfs.

project-origin is an attempt to create an artificial life environment that allows studying the emergence and evolution of intelligence; an area of study known as Noogenesis. project-origin aims at demonstrating how by setting basic physical rules, intelligent behavior appears.
Natures with different rules and creatures with different learning mechanisms can be easily simulated enabling the users of project-origin to investigate the tantalizing phenomenon of intelligence. It aims at expanding the horizon of artificial intelligence research by implementing mechanisms of intelligence governed by both Nature and Nurture. The underlying thought under this work is the idea that intelligence is not engineered but rather emerges.

project-origin does not only allow observing the emergence of behavior and the destiny of different intelligent creatures but make it easy to implement and extend reinforcement learning algorithms. While project-origin is built with deep learning models in mind, any learning algorithm can effortlessly be implemented and deployed.
For more information about the scientific motivation behind project-origin visit this page.

project-origin is a simulator that emulates a Universe in which Creatures live, adapt to, flourish or extinct. The universe has Physics, which are basic rules dictating its nature, such as it's Space, Time and Evolution. The Space is basically a grid of 'cells' that inhibits objects such as creatures, food, etc. The Evolution in project-origin describes the content of the creatures DNA and the rules of its creations and alternation. Creatures are beings, defined by their DNA, which may have different senses and a different set of actions depending on their Race. While still have no morphology and form, creatures have a Brain, that defines the nature of their intelligence. The brain role is to select an action given a state containing information about the creature's surrounding environment and its internal status. Periodically, using its brain learning rules, the creature can improve its knowledge and optimize his actions. The creature actions are not determined solely by its intellect (i.e., the brain decisions) but also affected by the inherited state-independent Fitrah. The main "goal" of the creatures is to increase their chance of survival under the environment physics, by learning to behave intelligibly. While the intelligence of the creature is determined by its genes and brain, there are three main mechanisms for collecting knowledge: (1) Evolution and inheritance (including the fitrah), (2) experience (trial and error) and (3) "Oral Tradition" representing part of the ancestors' knowledge.
The destiny of the creatures is determined by the universe's physics, their genes, skills, experience, and intelligence. In addition to the ultimate test of survival, IQ tests are performed periodically to reveal the knowledge of the creatures.

We believe that building a simulation which is close enough to reality, by modeling the important aspects of nature, could be a powerful scientific method. In biology, this field is called "Artificial Life". We think that the understanding of a phenomenon is substantially deeper when not only it can be experienced in a single setup but can be observed in different settings.

project-origin is made simple and graphics-deficient to allow fast execution, however, it is built and visioned to be easy to imagine. Most aspects of the simulator can be modified using programmatic inheritance and configuration files. The current version of the project is the first seed, and several fundamental features are planned for future releases. See the Future Plans page for more information.

For instruction on how to configure install and run the simulator see Execution page

We are more than happy to hear your comments, ideas, and contribution. Please contact us in the following address "kourgeorge at gmail dot com", or simply open an issue.

Citing project-origin

@misc{kour2018projectorigin,
  author       = {Kour, George},
  title        = {project-origin: an artificial life simulator for investigating noogenesis},
  month        = December,
  year         = 2018,
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.8475},
  howpublished = {\url{https://kourgeorge.github.io/project-origin/}}
}

Updates:

• 19.11.2018 - Added Artificial IQ tests to test the fit of creatures.
• 20.11.2018 - Added DQN based brain.
• 22.11.2018 - Adding Dashboard to visualize simulation progress.
• 23.11.2018 - Added App to allow dynamic control of simulation parameters.
• 24.11.2018 - Supporting Both human like creatures (WORK, MATE) and germs (EAT, DIVIDE, MOVE)
• 27.11.2018 - Supporting a 2-D Space and a better state representation + AIQ improvements
• 28.11.2018 - Tensor states (3D states) and Using Convnet in brain DQN. Defining Base Class for brain.
• 29.11.2018 - Supporting several creature races in the universe. Made new races creation easy.
• 30.11.2018 - Developing Gamified GUI to watch how different races compete and survive the battle.
• 30.11.2018 - Oral tradition implementation - supporting inheriting experience to descendants.
• 01.12.2018 - Adding the Fitrah to the DNA - an expression of the innate nature of a creature. Improving the state representation.
• 06.12.2018 - Adding Torch DQN implementation of the brain and allowing saving and loading models.
• 07.12.2018 - Adding sexual attraction for spouse selection
• 08.12.2018 - Improving the architecture and communication between the GUI and the simulator.
• 12.12.2018 - Adding communication infrastructure.
• 4.11.2021 - We need to show that the advaced species perform better in the environment, i.e., Zombie<DNA<Brain.
• TBI - Building a strategic battlefield such as capture the flag.
• TBI - Adding Criticism mechanism using social actor critic.
• TBI - Arcade environment facade that will allow gym like interaction with the environment.
• TBI - adding Dopamine implementation for RL algorithms.
• TBI - emotional/brain state functionality.
• TBI - creating an executable program.
• TBI - improve the gui to proper battle (two competing race) mode.
• TBI - Improving the physics architecture to allow easy alternation.
• TBI - creating a visual environment and creatures using unity.
• TBI - Different types of food/poison.
• TBI - (maybe) movement depends on size (internal energy).
• TBI - Implementing advanced environmental phenomenon like epidemic.