Unemi's paper for ALIFE VI

Evolution of a Botanical Development System in 3D Euclidean Space

presented in the poster session of ALIFE VI in June 26-29, 1998 at UCLA.
by Tatsuo Unemi and Takeshi KOIKE
Dept. of Info. Sys. Sci., Soka University Hachioji, Tokyo 192-8577, JAPAN

Abstract This paper describes an alternative trial to simulate evolutionary and developmental process of multi-cellular plants in 3D Euclidean space. Starting from a seed on the surface of the ground, each individual grows by spawning daughter cells of each active cells. The rule set of growth is encoded as a gene on the chromosome that indicates the orientation of daughter cell and state transition. The model is very simple but includes a type of metabolism for absorbing water at the root underground and photosynthesis at the cells above the ground. Through the computer simulation of evolutionary process by a genetic algorithm with a fitness measure given by the number of cells, a variety of phenotypic shapes which are similar to moss have emerged.

Related works.
Compressed PostScript form of the paper.
Sample 3D image (JPEG 56,757 bytes).
Sample 3D movie (MPEG 3,645,396 bytes).
Source program in C and Motif (gzipped tar format 36,362 bytes).

Updated on June 5, 1998 by Tatsuo UNEMI.
Please send any comments to unemi@iss.soka.ac.jp.