Schrum wins CIG-09 Best Student Paper Award
09/09/09

Jacob Schrum won the Best Student Paper Award at the 2009 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games for his paper with Risto Miikkulainen on Evolving Multi-modal Behavior in NPCs. See also videos of evolved behaviors.

New NSF, NIH, and ARP projects started
12/1/08

In the NSF-supported "CreativeIT" project, the goal is to leverage human intuition with neuroevolution discovery of complex behavior. In the ARP project, we are utilizing simulated environments like OpenNERO to learn complex high-level behaviors. Both of these projects build on our prior work on evolving neural networks. The NIH project, in turn, continues our cognitive science research stream: A model of bilingual lexicon is being built in order to study how it breaks down in aphasia, and how the performance can be best regained through rehabilitation.

Valsalam and Miikkulainen win a GECCO Best Paper Award
7/16/08

Vinod Valsalam and Risto Miikkulainen won the Best Paper Award in the "Artificial Life, Evolutionary Robotics, Adaptive Behavior, Evolvable Hardware" track of GECCO-2008 for their paper Modular Neuroevolution for Multilegged Locomotion. See also videos of walking behaviors.

New NNRG website launched
1/1/2008

The site has moved to a departmental server, it has a new look and feel (under the same design), and now includes a "demos" area that will be populated over the next few months. Please bear with us as we complete the transition and add the content.

NERO 2.0 released
09-06-2007

A new, significantly extended version of the NERO Machine Learning Game, based on rtNEAT neuroevolution, was released in Fall 2007. This version includes an interactive game mode, a new user interface, and more extensive training tools.

Reisinger and Miikkulainen win a Best Paper Award
07-11-2007

Joe Reisinger and Risto Miikkulainen won the Best Paper award in the Generative and Developmental Systems track at GECCO 2007, for their paper "Acquiring Evolvability through Adaptive Representations."

Computational Maps in the Visual Cortex published
12-15-2005

This book, co-authored by Risto Miikkulainen, James A. Bednar, Yoonsuck Choe, and Joseph Sirosh, and published by Springer, reviews 18 years of research by the UTCS Neural Networks Research Group on modeling the visual cortex. The book is accompanied by the Topographica software package for general modeling of computational maps.

Bednar, Grasemann, Miikkulainen, Sit, and Valsalam win awards at GECCO 2005
07-11-2005

Valsalam, Bednar, and Miikkulainen's Constructing Good Learners using Evolved Pattern Generators won the Best Paper Award in the Evolutionary Robotics, A-life, and Adaptive Behavior track, and Sit and Miikkulainen's Learning Basic Navigation for Personal Satellite Assistant using Neuroevolution in the Real World Applications track; Grasemann and Miikkulainen's Effective Image Compression using Evolved Wavelets won a Bronze Medal in the Human-Competitive Results Competition and was featured in NSF Discoveries.

Stanley, Bryant, and Miikkulainen win Best Paper Award
04-06-2005

Ken Stanley, Bobby Bryant, and Risto Miikkulainen won the Best Paper Award at the IEEE 2005 Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, for Evolving Neural Network Agents in the NERO Video Game. Risto gave a keynote talk and NERO producer Aliza Gold presented a paper on transfering academic AI to game applications.

NERO: A Pioneering Neuroevolution-based Video Game
06-20-2004

NERO demonstrates how neuroevolution can be used to adapt behaviors of autonomous agents in a complex real-time video game. Together with a team at UT Digital Media Collaboratory, Ken Stanley and Bobby Bryant have now completed the first prototype of NERO.

Neuroevolution Researchers Address Game Development Workshop
09-16-2003

Members of our neuroevolution group join stars from the world of computer game design in the second annual Game Development Workshop organized by the UT Digital Media Collaboratory, in an effort toward establlishing an ongoing technology transfer between academic AI research and the real-world considerations of commercial game development.

Gomez & Miikkulainen Win Best Paper Award
09-17-2003

Faustino Gomez and Risto Miikkulainen won the "Best of GECCO" award in the Real World Applications track at GECCO 2003, for their paper "Active Guidance for a Finless Rocket Using Neuroevolution"

UT Neural Networks Research Group Web Site Goes Live
06-03-2003

The Neural Networks Research Group at the University of Texas at Austin has redesigned and reprogrammed their website... and you're looking at it.

Stanley & Miikkulainen Win Best Paper Award
09-13-2001

Ken Stanley and Risto Miikkulainen's paper, Efficient Reinforcement Learning Through Evolving Neural Network Topologies," is the winner of the 2002 Best Paper Award in Genetic Algorithms.