Artificial life

Artificial life (ALife or A-Life) is a field of study wherein researchers examine systems related to natural life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry.[1] The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American theoretical biologist, in 1986.[2] In 1987 Langton organized the first conference on the field, in Los Alamos, New Mexico.[3] There are three main kinds of alife,[4] named for their approaches: soft,[5] from software; hard,[6] from hardware; and wet, from biochemistry. Artificial life researchers study traditional biology by trying to recreate aspects of biological phenomena.[7][8]

A Braitenberg vehicle simulation, programmed in breve, an artificial life simulator
  1. ^ "Dictionary.com definition". Retrieved 2007-01-19.
  2. ^ The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, The MIT Press, p.37. ISBN 978-0-262-73144-7
  3. ^ "The Game Industry's Dr. Frankenstein". Next Generation. No. 35. Imagine Media. November 1997. p. 10.
  4. ^ Mark A. Bedau (November 2003). "Artificial life: organization, adaptation and complexity from the bottom up" (PDF). Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-12-02. Retrieved 2007-01-19.
  5. ^ Maciej Komosinski and Andrew Adamatzky (2009). Artificial Life Models in Software. New York: Springer. ISBN 978-1-84882-284-9.
  6. ^ Andrew Adamatzky and Maciej Komosinski (2009). Artificial Life Models in Hardware. New York: Springer. ISBN 978-1-84882-529-1.
  7. ^ Langton, Christopher. "What is Artificial Life?". Archived from the original on 2007-01-17. Retrieved 2007-01-19.
  8. ^ Aguilar, W., Santamaría-Bonfil, G., Froese, T., and Gershenson, C. (2014). The past, present, and future of artificial life. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 1(8). https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2014.00008