Biological Traits in Artificial Self-Reproducing Systems

Biological Traits in Artificial Self-Reproducing Systems

Eleonora Bilotta, Pietro Pantano
Copyright: © 2012 |Pages: 15
DOI: 10.4018/ijsss.2012070104
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Abstract

This article presents an artificial taxonomy of 2-D, self-replicating cellular automata (CA) that can be considered as proto-organisms for structure replication. The authors found that the process of self-reproduction is a widespread mechanism. In fact, self-reproducers in 2-D CA are very common and the authors discovered almost 10 methods of self-replication. The structures these systems produce, from ordered to complex ones, are very similar to those found in biological endeavor. After examining self-replicating structures and the way they reproduce, the authors consider their behavior in relation to the patterns they realize and to the function they manifest in realizing artificial organisms. According to the authors, many methods produced by CA are based on universal models of biological cell development. The relevance of such work consists in the goal of modeling the evolution of living systems that can lead us to a better understanding of the essential properties of life.
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Formal Aspects

The considered environment is a two-dimensional CA, which can be thought of as the following tuple:A = (d, S, N, f) (1) where d is a positive integer that indicates the CA dimension (one-, two-, three-dimensional or more), S a set of finite states, N = (x1,....., xn) is a neighborhood vector of n different elements of Zd, and f is a local rule defined as:

f: Sn → S(2)

In our case d=2, and the neighborhood identifies the cells with a local interaction ray r, so Equation 2 to the (2r + 1)2 elements of S associates with another element of S, that is:

ijsss.2012070104.m01
(3) with sij ∈ S for ∀i, j.

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