ARTIFICIAL LIFE Life and A-Life Rudy Rucker Chapter 5 Artificial Life Lab by Rudy Rucker Rucker’s home Page http://www.rudyrucker.com p. 1 ARTIFICIAL LIFE Life and A-Life Rudy Rucker Chapter 5 Originally developed by Rucker at Autodesk, Inc., in 1992. First published by the Waite Group, Corte Madera, CA, 1993. The book is Copyright (C) Rudy Rucker 1993, 2010. The book and software are distrubuted under a Creative Commons cc by-nc-sa license. That is, users can share and build upon the work, and they must acknowledge Rucker’s part in the work, get permission from Rucker for commercial use, and redistribute the work under the same terms. Click for license details Last updated on May 18, 2010. The hand-drawn illustrations by David Povilaitis still should to be added. The software to accompany this book is available for free download online at http://www.rudyrucker.com/boppers The software was rebuilt to work with 32-bit platforms such as Windows 7 in May, 2010. p. 2 ARTIFICIAL LIFE Life and A-Life Rudy Rucker Chapter 5 CONTENTS 1 Life and A-Life ......................................................................................................................... 7 Gnarl ............................................................................................................................... 7 Sex .................................................................................................................................. 11 Genomes and Phenomes .................................................................................... 11 Reproduction ...................................................................................................... 12 Mating ................................................................................................................ 12 Mutation, Transposition and Zapping ................................................................ 13 Death ............................................................................................................................... 14 Biological A-Life ............................................................................................................ 16 Frankenstein ....................................................................................................... 16 Biochemistry ...................................................................................................... 17 Robots ............................................................................................................................. 19 Science-Fiction Robots ...................................................................................... 19 Real Robots ........................................................................................................ 19 Telerobotics ....................................................................................................... 20 Evolving Robots ................................................................................................ 21 Notes and References to Chapter One: Life and Artificial Life ...................................... 22 2 Computer A-Life ....................................................................................................................... 24 Inside The Machine ......................................................................................................... 24 Moving the Instruction Pointer .......................................................................... 25 Reading Data ...................................................................................................... 25 Logic and Arithmetic ......................................................................................... 26 Writing Data ...................................................................................................... 26 Input and Output ................................................................................................ 27 Timesharing ....................................................................................................... 27 Viruses and Worms ......................................................................................................... 27 Computer Viruses .............................................................................................. 27 Worms ................................................................................................................ 29 A-Life Investigations ......................................................................................... 29 Turing Machines ............................................................................................................. 30 Definition ........................................................................................................... 30 Operation ........................................................................................................... 32 Theory ................................................................................................................ 34 Bug Worlds ..................................................................................................................... 36 Turmites .......................................................................................................................... 39 The Boppers Turmites........................................................................................ 41 Boids ............................................................................................................................... 43 Boid Vectors ...................................................................................................... 43 The Reynolds Algorithm .................................................................................... 44 The Boppers Boids ............................................................................................. 45 Turboids .......................................................................................................................... 47 Cellular Automata ........................................................................................................... 48 A Space of Cells ............................................................................................... 49 Parallel Computation ......................................................................................... 49 Local Neighborhoods ......................................................................................... 49 Homogeneity of Law ......................................................................................... 50 p. 3 ARTIFICIAL LIFE Life and A-Life Rudy Rucker Chapter 5 CAs For Physics ................................................................................................. 50 CAs For A-Life .................................................................................................. 51 The Lambda Rule ............................................................................................... 54 Notes and References to Chapter Two: Computer A-Life .............................................. 54 3 Genetic Algorithms ................................................................................................................... 58 Search Problems .............................................................................................................. 58 The Standard Genetic Algorithm .................................................................................... 61 Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Life ........................................................................... 64 Notes and References to Chapter Three: Genetic Algorithms ........................................ 66 Part Two The Boppers Program .................................................................................................. 68 4 Installation and Quick Start ...................................................................................................... 69 4 Installation and Quick Start ...................................................................................................... 69 Requirements and Installation ......................................................................................... 69 Running Boppers ............................................................................................................ 70 Quick Start ...................................................................................................................... 71 Boppers And Their Trails .................................................................................. 71 How Boppers Score ........................................................................................... 74 Fancier Trails ..................................................................................................... 76 Boids And The Third Dimension ....................................................................... 78 Colonies and Genes............................................................................................ 82 Cursor Tools ...................................................................................................... 84 Cellular Automata .............................................................................................. 85 Notes and References to Chapter Four: Installation and Quick Start ............................. 86 5 The Boppers and Their World ................................................................................................. 87 Boppers ..........................................................................................................................