Welcome to the Evolutionary Complexity (EPlex) Research Group at the University of Central Florida.  Our research focuses on abstracting the essential properties of natural evolution that made it possible to discover astronomically complex structures such as the human brain.  If such properties can be abstracted into computer algorithms, then they can be leveraged to automate the discovery of large-scale neural networks, robot morphologies, building and vehicle architectures, art, and music. 

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Latest News

3/28/08: "Scaffolding for Interactively Evolving Drum Tracks for Existing Songs ,"  by Amy K. Hoover, Michael P. Rosario, and Kenneth O. Stanley won the Best Paper Award at the Sixth European Workshop on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design (EvoMUSART 2008).

11/8/07: EPlex releases Dance Evolution, which allows you to evolve dancers to any MIDI song interactively.

7/23/07: Our video on Dance Evolution won the Best Student Video Award at the AAAI-07 AI Video Competition.   Congratulations to Jeff Balogh, Greg Dubbin, and Michael Do, who worked on the project as undergraduate machine learning students! The Dance Evolution program, which evolves novel dance moves, will be released at a future date.

4/11/07: HyperNEAT C++ software for evolving large-scale neural networks released.  Available in the software section. 

4/5/07: NEAT Particles software for interactively evolving particle systems released.  Available in the software section. 

3/27/07: GECCO publications on the new HyperNEAT algorithm (using connective CPPNs to create neural networks) are available here.

3/27/07: New journal paper posted: "Compositional Pattern Producing Networks: A Novel Abstraction of Development," by Kenneth O. Stanley.

3/25/07:  "A Novel Generative Encoding for Exploiting Neural Network Sensor and Output Geometry", by David. B. D'Ambrosio and Kenneth O. Stanley is nominated for Best Paper Award in Generative and Developmental Systems.

We aim to reproduce through artificial means the process of continual elaboration of form seen in natural evolution.