# ScienceWorld
**Repository Path**: mirrors_allenai/ScienceWorld
## Basic Information
- **Project Name**: ScienceWorld
- **Description**: ScienceWorld is a text-based virtual environment centered around accomplishing tasks from the standardized elementary science curriculum.
- **Primary Language**: Unknown
- **License**: Apache-2.0
- **Default Branch**: main
- **Homepage**: None
- **GVP Project**: No
## Statistics
- **Stars**: 0
- **Forks**: 0
- **Created**: 2022-03-13
- **Last Updated**: 2026-03-15
## Categories & Tags
**Categories**: Uncategorized
**Tags**: None
## README
ScienceWorld
ScienceWorld is a text-based virtual environment centered around accomplishing tasks from the standardized elementary science curriculum. This code accompanies the paper [ScienceWorld: Is your Textual Agent Smarter than a 5th grader?](https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.07540).

### Demo and examples
You can try ScienceWorld yourself via our [HuggingFace Space](https://huggingface.co/spaces/MarcCote/ScienceWorld) or read some of the [playthrough transcripts](https://sciworld.apps.allenai.org/explore).
### Citation
```
@inproceedings{wang-etal-2022-scienceworld,
title = "{S}cience{W}orld: Is your Agent Smarter than a 5th Grader?",
author = "Wang, Ruoyao and
Jansen, Peter and
C{\^o}t{\'e}, Marc-Alexandre and
Ammanabrolu, Prithviraj",
editor = "Goldberg, Yoav and
Kozareva, Zornitsa and
Zhang, Yue",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing",
month = dec,
year = "2022",
address = "Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2022.emnlp-main.775/",
doi = "10.18653/v1/2022.emnlp-main.775",
pages = "11279--11298",
}
```
# Quickstart
**Before running:** You will have to have `Java 1.8+` installed on your system (shipped with most linux distributions) and `Python 3.8+`. We recommend creating a conda environment like this:
```bash
conda create --name scienceworld python=3.8
conda activate scienceworld
```
Then, install ScienceWorld either from PyPi:
pip install scienceworld
or from source in development mode:
git clone https://github.com/allenai/ScienceWorld.git
cd ScienceWorld
pip install .
Run an example random agent, on task 13 (classification: place a non-living thing in a box), for 5 episodes:
python examples/random_agent.py --task-num=13 --num-episodes=5 --simplifications-preset easy
Run a user console where you can interact with the environment, on task 3 (change of state: melting):
python examples/human.py --task-num=3 --num-episodes=5
# Web Server Demo
A web server demo is also available, that allows running a ScienceWorld user console that can be interacted with in a web browser.

To run the web server demo:
```bash
conda create --name scienceworld python=3.8
conda activate scienceworld
pip install scienceworld[webserver]
```
Run the web server:
python examples/scienceworld-web-server-example.py
Point your web browser to:
`localhost:8080`
# ScienceWorld Design
ScienceWorld is written in Scala (2.12.9), and compiles using `sbt` into a JAR file that is run with Java. For convenience, a Python API is provided (Python >= 3.8), which interfaces using the `py4j` package.
If you modified the Scala code, you can recompile the JAR file by running:
```bash
./simulator/package.sh
pip install -e .
```
# Tasks
The tasks are listed in the table below along with their number of variations. Either the task ID or its name can be used to a task with `env.load()`.
| Task ID | Task Name | # Variations |
|-------|----------------------------------------------------|------|
| 1-1 | boil | 30 |
| 1-2 | melt | 30 |
| 1-3 | freeze | 30 |
| 1-4 | change-the-state-of-matter-of | 30 |
| 2-1 | use-thermometer | 540 |
| 2-2 | measure-melting-point-known-substance | 436 |
| 2-3 | measure-melting-point-unknown-substance | 300 |
| 3-1 | power-component | 20 |
| 3-2 | power-component-renewable-vs-nonrenewable-energy | 20 |
| 3-3 | test-conductivity | 900 |
| 3-4 | test-conductivity-of-unknown-substances | 600 |
| 4-1 | find-living-thing | 300 |
| 4-2 | find-non-living-thing | 300 |
| 4-3 | find-plant | 300 |
| 4-4 | find-animal | 300 |
| 5-1 | grow-plant | 126 |
| 5-2 | grow-fruit | 126 |
| 6-1 | chemistry-mix | 32 |
| 6-2 | chemistry-mix-paint-secondary-color | 36 |
| 6-3 | chemistry-mix-paint-tertiary-color | 36 |
| 7-1 | lifespan-longest-lived | 125 |
| 7-2 | lifespan-shortest-lived | 125 |
| 7-3 | lifespan-longest-lived-then-shortest-lived | 125 |
| 8-1 | identify-life-stages-1 | 14 |
| 8-2 | identify-life-stages-2 | 10 |
| 9-1 | inclined-plane-determine-angle | 168 |
| 9-2 | inclined-plane-friction-named-surfaces | 1386 |
| 9-3 | inclined-plane-friction-unnamed-surfaces | 162 |
| 10-1 | mendelian-genetics-known-plant | 120 |
| 10-2 | mendelian-genetics-unknown-plant | 480 |
## Simplifications
ScienceWorld supports a number of simplifications that can be applied to the environment to make it easier for agents to learn. These simplifications can be applied by passing the `--simplifications-preset` argument to the command line interface, or by passing the `simplifications` argument to the Python API.
The available simplifications are:
- `teleportAction`: Allows agents to instantly move to any location in the environment.
- `openDoors`: All doors in the environment are open by default.
- `selfWateringFlowerPots`: Automatically waters all flower pots in the environment.
- `noElectricalAction`: Disables electrical actions, making it easier for agents to learn tasks that do not require electrical actions.
- `openContainers`: All containers in the environment are open by default.
The `--simplifications-preset` argument can be set to `easy` to apply the following simplifications:
- `teleportAction`
- `openDoors`
- `selfWateringFlowerPots`
- `noElectricalAction` (for non-connectivity tasks)
> [!WARNING]
> The `easy` preset differs from what is described in the paper (see Appendix B.5). The `openContainers` is not included in that preset and should manually be added if desired.
# Baseline Agents
**DRRN:** https://github.com/cognitiveailab/drrn-scienceworld
**KG-A2C:** https://github.com/cognitiveailab/kga2c-scienceworld
**CALM:** https://github.com/cognitiveailab/calm-scienceworld
**Behavior Cloning and Decision Transformer:** https://github.com/cognitiveailab/t5-scienceworld
# Developers
To compile the ScienceWorld JAR file, follow these steps:
### Prerequisites
You will need to have `Java 1.8+` SDK installed on your system (shipped with most linux distributions). E.g. on Ubuntu, you can install it with:
sudo apt-get install openjdk-21-jdk
Then, install sbt (Scala Build Tool) by running:
```bash
echo "deb https://repo.scala-sbt.org/scalasbt/debian all main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sbt.list
echo "deb https://repo.scala-sbt.org/scalasbt/debian /" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sbt_old.list
curl -sL "https://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x2EE0EA64E40A89B84B2DF73499E82A75642AC823" | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/sbt.asc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install sbt
```
### Building the JAR
Once you have `sbt` installed, you can compile the ScienceWorld JAR file by running:
```bash
./simulator/package.sh
```