Download AnimatLab

AnimatLab is a software tool that combines biomechanical simulation and biologically realistic neural networks. You can build the body of an animal, robot, or other machine and place it in a virtual world where the physics of its interaction with the environment are accurate and realistic. You can then design a nervous system that controls the behavior of the body in the virtual world. If you would like to learn more about what AnimatLab can do then please see the main page.

You can download the latest version of free AnimatLab software here: AnimatLabSetup.exe. Save the install file to your hard drive, run it and follow the instructions. AnimatLab requires the latest version of the .net runtimes and the managed version of DirectX. The install file will check to see if you already have the required files installed. If you do not then it will prompt you to install them and automatically download the required files. Once the installation is complete, AnimatLab will run. The Using AnimatLab section has several tutorials that explain how to get around in the user interface of animatlab, and how to use the main editors. Also, the Examples section has a number of informative tutorials that show you how to build working systems.

AnimatLab is an open-source project that allows you to combine biomechanical simulation and biologically realistic neural networks to produce real-time simulations of virtual animals and biomimetic robots. All of the code that we have developed is available. Go to the AnimatLab SDK page for information on how to get access to the source code. We use a commercial application called Vortex for the physics engine and the core of this software is not available. Currently, there is no documentation and very little in the way of comments for the source code, but we do have several video tutorials and a wizard which makes it easy to build new plug-in modules for AnimatLab.

Need Help? Common Problems:

Windows 7 Users: When the install gets to the part asking you to install .net and directX you can skip this. It was required on older operating systems, but as long as you have the latest service packs you should be able to skip over this part and have the application work fine. If you run into problems please let me know. I will be looking into making the installer intelligent enough to detect the operating system shortly.

1. When I attempt to start any of the simulations I receive the following error:

This problem occurs because the AnimatLab simulator is trying to use 32-bit texture images and you video card is configured to 16-bit color. If this occurs then you need to go to your desktop, right click and select the properties item of the pop-up menu. Go to the settings tab and change the color quality from 16-bit to 32-bit. The simulations should run now. We are aware of this problem and we will be working to come up with a general way to fix it without requiring users to change their settings.

2. One or more of my toolbars are gone?

There are two buttons in the right hand side of all of the toolbars. One is a pushpin and the other is a X. If you hit the push-pin it will hide or show that toolbar. If you hit the x it will close the toolbar. When a toolbar has been closed you can open it again by going to the view menu and selecting the appropriate toolbar. For example, selecting "Project Workspace" will open that toolbar. If the toolbar was on a window, like a data chart, then look under the View->Toolbars menu when that window is selected.

If you have any problems with downloading, installing, or running AnimatLab then please post your problems on the AnimatLab Forum and I will try and help you through the problem.