Alife takes yet another approach to exploring the mysteries of
intelligence. It has many aspects similar to EC and Connectionism, but
takes these ideas and gives them a meta-level twist. Alife emphasizes the
development of intelligence through emergent behavior of
complex adaptive systems. Alife stresses the social or group
based aspects of intelligence. It seeks to understand life and survival. By
studying the behaviors of groups of 'beings' Alife seeks to discover the
way intelligence or higher order activity emerges from seemingly simple
individuals. Cellular Automata and Conway's Game of Life are probably the
most commonly known applications of this field. Complex Systems
(abbreviated CS) are very similar to alife in the way the are approached,
just more general in definition (ie. alife is a type of complex system).
Usually complex system software takes the form of a simulator.
These are libraries of code or classes for use in programming within
the artificial life field. They are not meant as stand alone
applications, but rather as tools for building your own applications.
Biome is a C++ library aimed at individual-based/agent-based
simulations. It is somewhat similar to Swarm, EcoSim or Simex but tries
to be more efficient and less monolithic without compromising object-
oriented design. Currently there is an event based scheduling system, a
C++ified Mersenne-Twister RNG, several general analysis classes, some
Qt-based GUI classes, a very basic persistence/database framework (used
also for parameter storage) and many other small useful things.
CASE (Cellular Automaton Simulation Environment) is a C++
toolkit for visualizing discrete models in two dimensions:
so-called cellular automata. The aim of this project is to
create an integrated framework for creating generalized cellular
automata using the best, standardized technology of the day.
In EcoSim an ecosystem is described by all static and dynamic
properties of the individuals involved in the system as well as time
varying properties of the environment. Individuals change their state
over time or due to internal and external events. The environment is
also defined via dynamic objects which can change. Supports on the fly
analysis and animation of generated data. It is a C++ class library
designed to support individual-oriented modelling and simulation
of ecological systems.
The Integrating Modelling Toolkit (IMT) is a generic, comprehensive,
and extensible set of abstractions allowing definition and use of
interoperable model components. Modellers create an IMT "world" made
of IMT "agents" that will perform each a particular phase of a
modelling task. The core set of IMT agents can describe generic,
modular, distributed model components, either native to the IMT or
integrating existing simulation toolkits, specialized for tasks that
range from simple calculation of functions in an interpreted language
to spatially explicit simulation, model optimization, GIS analysis,
visualization and advanced statistical analysis. IMT agents are
designed to easily "glue" together in higher-level simulations
integrating different modelling paradigms and toolkits. The IMT can be
easily extended by users and developers through a convenient plug-in
mechanism
The current version of MAML is basically an extension to Objective-C
(using the Swarm libraries). It consists of a couple of
'macro-keywords' that define the general structure of a simulation. The
remaining must be filled with pure swarm-code. A MAML-to-Swarm (named
xmc) compiler is also being developed which compiles the source code
into a swarm application.
The SIMEX package contains a number of C++ classes that make it easier
to build discrete-event, micropopulation models. (There is also some
support for differential equation models.) It comes with a tuturial,
quite a few examples and fairly decent documentation.
The swarm Alife simulation kit. Swarm is a simulation environment
which facilitates development and experimentation with simulations
involving a large number of agents behaving and interacting within a
dynamic environment. It consists of a collection of classes and
libraries written in Objective-C and allows great flexibility in
creating simulations and analyzing their results. It comes with three
demos and good documentation.
These are various applications, software kits, etc. meant for research
in the field of artificial life. Their ease of use will vary, as they
were designed to meet some particular research interest more than as
an easy to use commercial package.
Achilles is an evolution simulation based on Larry Yaeger's PolyWorld.
It uses Hebbian neural networks, and an extremely simplified physical
model that allows virtual organisms to interact freely in a simulated
environment.
The computer program avida is an auto-adaptive genetic system designed
primarily for use as a platform in Artificial Life research. The avida
system is based on concepts similar to those employed by the tierra
program, that is to say it is a population of self-reproducing strings
with a Turing-complete genetic basis subjected to Poisson-random
mutations. The population adapts to the combination of an intrinsic
fitness landscape (self-reproduction) and an externally imposed
(extrinsic) fitness function provided by the researcher. By studying
this system, one can examine evolutionary adaptation, general traits of
living systems (such as self-organization), and other issues pertaining
to theoretical or evolutionary biology and dynamic systems.
Display and evolve biomorphs. It is a program which draws the
biomorphs based on parametric plots of Fourier sine and cosine series
and let's you play with them using the genetic algorithm.
The system consists of a compiler for the Cellang cellular
automata programming language, along with the corresponding
documentation, viewer, and various tools. Cellang has been
undergoing refinement for the last several years (1991-1995),
with corresponding upgrades to the compiler. Postscript
versions of the tutorial and language reference manual are
available for those wanting more detailed information. The most
important distinguishing features of Cellang, include support
for:
any number of dimensions;
compile time specification of each dimensions size;
cell neighborhoods of any size (though bounded at compile time) and
shape;
positional and time dependent neighborhoods;
associating multiple values (fields), including arrays,
with each cell;
associating a potentially unbounded number of mobile
agents [ Agents are mobile entities based on a mechanism of
the same name in the Creatures system, developed by Ian
Stephenson (ian@ohm.york.ac.uk).] with each cell; and
local interactions only, since it is impossible to
construct automata that contain any global control or
references to global variables.
This is a free version of the Creatures3 ALife game. It has fewer
species and a small 'space-station' world, but can connect to other
worlds over the internet and (if you have the windows version of the
game) can connect to your C3 world. The game itself revolves around
breeding and training the alife creatures, 'Norns'. Its strikes a
pretty nice balance between fun and science, or so I'm told.
dblife: Sources for a fancy Game of Life program for X11
(and curses). It is not meant to be incredibly fast (use xlife for
that:-). But it IS meant to allow the easy editing and viewing of
Life objects and has some powerful features. The related dblifelib
package is a library of Life objects to use with the program.
dblifelib: This is a library of interesting Life objects,
including oscillators, spaceships, puffers, and other weird things.
The related dblife package contains a Life program which can read the
objects in the Library.
Drone is a tool for automatically running batch jobs of a simulation
program. It allows sweeps over arbitrary sets of parameters, as well
as multiple runs for each parameter set, with a separate random seed
for each run. The runs may be executed either on a single computer or
over the Internet on a set of remote hosts. Drone is written in Expect
(an extension to the Tcl scripting language) and runs under Unix. It
was originally designed for use with the Swarm agent-based simulation
framework, but Drone can be used with any simulation program that
reads parameters from the command line or from an input file.
EcoLab is a system that implements an abstract ecology model. It
is written as a set of Tcl/Tk commands so that the model
parameters can easily be changed on the fly by means of editing
a script. The model itself is written in C++.
GOL is a simulator for conway's game of life (a simple cellular
automata), and other simple rule sets. The emphasis here is on
speed and scale, in other words you can setup large and fast
simulations.
This program is similiar to "Conway's Game of Life" but yet it is very
different. It takes "Conway's Game of Life" and applies it to a society
(human society). This means there is a very different (and much larger)
ruleset than in the original game. Things need to be taken into account
such as the terrain, age, sex, culture, movement, etc
Langton's Ant is an example of a finite-state cellular automata. The
ant (or ants) start out on a grid. Each cell is either black or white.
If the ant is on a black square, it turns right 90 and moves forward
one unit. If the ant is on a white square, it turns left 90 and moves
forward one unit. And when the ant leaves a square, it inverts the
color. The neat thing about Langton's Ant is that no matter what
pattern field you start it out on, it eventually builds a "road," which
is a series of 117 steps that repeat indefinitely, each time leaving
the ant displaced one pixel vertically and horizontally.
LEE (Latent Energy Environments) is both an Alife model and a
software tool to be used for simulations within the framework of that
model. We hope that LEE will help understand a broad range of issues
in theoretical, behavioral, and evolutionary biology. The LEE tool
described here consists of approximately 7,000 lines of C code and
runs in both Unix and Macintosh platforms.
Matrem is a computer program that simulates life. It belongs to the
emerging science of "artificial life", which studies evolution and
complex systems in general by simulation. Matrem is also a game, where
players compete to create the fittest lifeform. Their efforts are the
driving force behind the program.
*(netlife-2.0.tar.gz contains both Net-Life and ZooLife)
Net-Life is a simulation of artificial-life, with neural "brains"
generated via slightly random techniques. Net-Life uses artificial
neural nets and evolutionary algorithms to breed artificial organisms
that are similar to single cell organisms. Net-life uses asexual
reproduction of its fittest individuals with a chance of mutation
after each round to eventually evolve successful life-forms.
ZooLife is a simulation of artificial-life. ZooLife uses
probabilistic methods and evolutionary algorithms to breed
artificial organisms that are similar to plant/animal zoo
organisms. ZooLife uses asexual reproduction with a chance of
mutation.
The POSES++ software tool supports the development and
simulation of models. Regarding the simulation technique models
are suitable reproductions of real or planned systems for their
simulative investigation.
In all industrial sectors or branches POSES++ can model and
simulate any arbitrary system which is based on a discrete and
discontinuous behaviour. Also continuous systems can mostly be
handled like discrete systems e.g., by quantity discretion and
batch processing.
Primordial Soup is an artificial life program. Organisms in the
form of computer software loops live in a shared memory space
(the "soup") and self-reproduce. The organisms mutate and
evolve, behaving in accordance with the principles of Darwinian
evolution.
The program may be started with one or more organisms seeding
the soup. Alternatively, the system may be started "sterile",
with no organisms present. Spontaneous generation of
self-reproducing organisms has been observed after runs as short
as 15 minutes.
Tierra's written in the C programming language. This source code
creates a virtual computer and its operating system, whose
architecture has been designed in such a way that the executable
machine codes are evolvable. This means that the machine code can be
mutated (by flipping bits at random) or recombined (by swapping
segments of code between algorithms), and the resulting code remains
functional enough of the time for natural (or presumably artificial)
selection to be able to improve the code over time.
This program simulates primitive life-forms, equipped with some
basic instincts and abilities, in a 2D environment consisting of
cells. By mutation new generations can prove their success, and thus
passing on "good family values".
The brain of a TIN can be seen as a collection of processes, each
representing drives or impulses to behave a certain way, depending on
the state/perception of the environment ( e.g. presence of food,
walls, neighbors, scent traces) These behavior process currently are
: eating, moving, mating, relaxing, tracing others, gathering food and
killing. The process with the highest impulse value takes control, or
in other words: the tin will act according to its most urgent need.
This program will evolve patterns for John Horton Conway's game
of Life. It will also handle general cellular automata with the
orthogonal neighborhood and up to 8 states (it's possible to recompile
for more states, but very expensive in memory). Transition rules and
sample patterns are provided for the 8-state automaton of E. F. Codd,
the Wireworld automaton, and a whole class of `Prisoner's Dilemma'
games.