Artificial Life :: essays research papers fc

Artificial sprightliness (commonly called a- spiritedness) is the call applied collectively to attempts being made to develop mathematical models and computing device simulations of the ways in which living organisms develop, grow, and evolve. Researchers in this burgeoning field hope to strive deeper insights into the nature of organic life as well as into the yet possibilities of COMPUTER science and robotics (see ROBOT). A-life techniques atomic number 18 also being mapd to look for the origins and chemical processes of metabolism. Some investigators have even proposed that near digital "life" in computers might already be considered a real life form.BackgroundThe term artificial life was coined in the 1980s by Christopher Langdon, a computer scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Santa Fe Institute. Langdon organized the premier(prenominal) experimental workshop on the subject at Santa Fe in 1987. Since then other a-life conferences have taken place , drawing increasingly wider attention and a growing number of participants.Theoretical studies of a-life, however, had been in progress long originally the 1980s. Most notably, the Hungarian-born U.S. mathematician John VON NEUMANN, one of the pioneers of computer science, had begun to explore the nature of precise basic a-life formats called cellular automata (see AUTOMATA, THEORY OF) in the 1950s. Cellular automata are notional mathematical "cells"-analogous to checkerboard squares-that can be made to simulate strong-arm processes by subjecting them to certain simple rules called algorithms (see ALGORITHM). Before his death, von Neumann had developed a set of algorithms by which a cellular automaton-a box shape with a very long tail-could "reproduce" itself.Another important predecessor of a-life question was Dutch biologist Aristid Lindenmeyer. Interested in the mathematics of plant growth, Lindenmeyer found in the 1960s that through the use of a few basic a lgorithms-now called Lindenmeyer systems, or L-systems-he could model biochemical processes as well as tracing the victimisation of complex biological forms such as flowers. Computer-graphics programs now make use of L-systems to yield realistic three-dimensional images of plants.The significance of Lindenmeyers contribution is evident in the fact that so-called "genetic algorithms" are now basic to research into a-life as well as many other areas of interest. Genetic algorithms, initiative described by computer scientist John Holland of the University of Michigan in the 1970s, are comparable to L-systems. A computer worker trying to answer some question about a-life sets up a system-an algorithm-by which the computer itself rapidly grades the six-fold possible answers that it has produced to the question.