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An Open and Accessible Platform for Evolving Virtual Creatures
1University of Western Australia Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Computer Engineering michael.finn@research.uwa.edu.au.
Abstract:
We present The Simsulator, an open-source platform for sim for simulating evolved virtual creatures that balances educational accessibility with research-grade performance. Inspired by Karl Sims's original model, it enables real-time evolution of articulated, 3-D physics-based agents. Its integration with Unity's Data-Oriented Technology Stack allows for scalable and deterministic simulation of thousands of agents on consumer hardware. Users can run evolutionary trials, edit genotypes, and explore behaviors through an interactive interface or headless batch mode. Benchmarks show a 10-40× speedup over legacy implementations, with support for populations of 10,000+. The Simsulator offers a flexible, high-performance foundation for Artificial Life research and education.
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