Artificial Life using a Book and Bookmarker

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel artificial life model combining cellular automata and virtual creatures, enabling complex reproduction, development, and interactions with high morphological and behavioral freedom.

Contribution

It proposes a new artificial life framework that integrates cellular automata and Sims-like models to simulate life processes with enhanced expressive capacity.

Findings

Creatures exhibit unique survival strategies.

The model demonstrates complex reproduction and development.

High morphological and behavioral diversity achieved.

Abstract

Reproduction, development, and individual interactions are essential topics in artificial life. The cellular automata, which can handle these in a composite way, is highly restricted in its form and behavior because it represents life as a pattern of cells. In contrast, the virtual creatures proposed by Karl Sims have a very high degree of freedom in terms of morphology and behavior. However, they have limited expressive capacity in terms of those viewpoints. This study carefully extracts the characteristics of the cellular automata and Sims models to propose a new artificial life model that can simulate reproduction, development, and individual interactions while exhibiting high expressive power for morphology and behavior. The simulation was performed by sequentially reading a book with genetic information and repeatedly executing four actions: expansion, connection, disconnection, and transition. The virtual creatures in the proposed model exhibit unique survival strategies and lifestyles and acquire interesting properties in reproduction, development, and individual interactions while having freedom in morphology and behavior.