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For the record, I'm one of Dr. Adami's grad students in (The Digital Life Lab) at Caltech. Most of the programming is done at our sister lab in Michigan.

We recently released Avida version 2.0, with a new GUI and complete with god mode where you can inspect and edit the genome of any organism at any point.

We encourage you to play with Avida yourself. You can get information and a Mac OS X binary at:

Avida's Hompeage. Older versions for linux and windows are available there as well.

The intrepid can build the current version for OS X or Linux from source, please see Avida's Sourceforge Project. If you want the nice GUI, you'll need QT.

Other information about Avida, our lab's research, and artificial life in general can be found at:

The Digital Life Lab Homepage

Our sister lab at MSU, run by Professors Charles Ofria and Richard Lenski.

The Int'l Society For Artificial Life

If you want to know more about artificial living creatures (either robots, within computers or art, ...), visit Artificial Life Online.

I've been evolving algorithms for a long time now, using finite state machines (FSM) which can be easily moved across architectures and programming languages. Quite often, an FSM evolves to exhibit surprising behavior -- and given the complexity of the machines, it is impractical to understand why the FSM acts as it does.

Note that I said "impractical" -- given time, I could follow the FSM's logic and discern it's "thinking" (and I have done so with simpler machines).

If you want real, concrete information about genetic algorithms and artificial life, I suggest visiting ALife.org or the U.S. Navy's GA Archive.

Shameless plug: For five years, I've been developing a free (no ads) web site, Complexity Central, devoted to evolutionary algorithms, artificial life, and emergent behavior. I've posted several Java applets that demonstrate genetic algorithms, cellular automata, flocking behavior, and related subjects.

This is part of my Coyote Gulch web site, which contains lots of articles, web links, bibliographies, and free code in C++, Java, and Fortran(!).

...on Mars. Silicon is an important ingredient in the manufacturing of computers and according to some experts it is possible to construct artificial life using computers. The inescapable conclusion is that this is evidence that life once inhabited the Martian surface.

I'm working on a project to promote "open source" in the academic field of Artificial Life. You can find our (preliminary) web site at http://open.alife.org. We also have a mailing list, open@alife.org, in which we discuss possibilities for introducing and promoting open source in academia.

An excerpt from our mission: "We all know that good science must be verifiable (or falsifiable or testable). Science in Artificial Life is mainly based on computational experiments that were executed to find the results for scientific publication. If the source code of these experiments are not available for the public, the experiments are not verifiable. Therefore, source code of the experiments should be made publicly available, and that's what the "Open ALife community" wants to achieve."

Currently, our main goal is to influence the peer-reviewing process of conference proceedings. If peer reviewers see a paper in which software has been used, the peer reviewer has to ask the author to include a reference to his source code along with his paper.

We have been thinking of using GPL for these publications but we're not sure whether the GPL offers us the things we need (for example - if someone uses your software in his own publication - does he have to refer to the GPL'ed software?)

I'm working on a project to promote "open source" in the academic field of Artificial Life. You can find our (preliminary) web site at http://open.alife.org. We also have a mailing list, open@alife.org, in which we discuss possibilities for introducing and promoting open source in academia.

An excerpt from our mission: "We all know that good science must be verifiable (or falsifiable or testable). Science in Artificial Life is mainly based on computational experiments that were executed to find the results for scientific publication. If the source code of these experiments are not available for the public, the experiments are not verifiable. Therefore, source code of the experiments should be made publicly available, and that's what the "Open ALife community" wants to achieve."

Currently, our main goal is to influence the peer-reviewing process of conference proceedings. If peer reviewers see a paper in which software has been used, the peer reviewer has to ask the author to include a reference to his source code along with his paper.

We have been thinking of using GPL for these publications but we're not sure whether the GPL offers us the things we need (for example - if someone uses your software in his own publication - does he have to refer to the GPL'ed software?)

Well I guess that's true, but the building blocks of DNA, for example, are really simple and look where we've gotten. This article talks about building blocks that are at least as varied as CTGA of DNA.

As for a pre-conceived design, you missed a subtle point. The robot wasn't told look for a design that the makers already know. The task was come up with a design that solves a known problem.

Genetic Algorythms are really interesting things. See Alife for as good a launching point as any into the field.

Humans may be the first species to create it's own successor.

If you want to find out more about Artificial Life, please visit http://alife.org, the central online resource for artificial life.