Note: the demo has been tested in the Firefox and Chrome browsers, Internet Explorer support requires the Chrome Frame plugin.
This demo is a simplified version of the maze domain investigated in several novelty search publications. For simplicity, the search space and the behavior space in the demo are the same: x,y coordinates in a two-dimensional space. That is, each individual is a position (i.e. not a neural network).
Below is a side-by-side comparison of objective-based search (left) and novelty search (right). The blue circles (which will appear as a group after you press "go" below) represent a population of points in the two-dimensional search space. The objective is to evolve a point that reaches the green circle (goal). Mutations are random perturbations of the x and y coordinates of the blue circles; any mutation that causes a point to enter a black square (i.e. wall) is rejected. In this way, walls are constraints in the search space. The "toggle speciation" button causes genotype-based speciation, similar to what happens within NEAT, so that you can see how novelty search and fitness-based search interact with speciation.
The left search process rewards closer distance to the objective, while the right rewards novelty. Everything else is the same.