Cellular Automata 2 Preparation

Overview

There are lots of different things you can do beyond the basic glider in a cellular automaton. Today’s preparation is focused on finding inspiration for something more complex that you want to try to do.

Basic Learning Objectives

Before class, you should be able to:

• Explain at a high-level how modern CA models have moved beyond discrete cellular automata

Advanced Learning Objectives

After class, you should be able to:

• Use Empirical to display a grid of varying colors
• Start on making a continuous cellular automata

Resources

The following are resources that I think will help you achieve the basic learning objectives. Remember that you can also interact with Gemini but you should check the answers provided.

• Encyclopedia of Artificial Life Article on Cellular Automata
  • The embedded video is currently in French for some reason, here is another one
• Growing Neural Cellular Automata - don’t worry if you don’t have the machine learning background to understand exactly how they trained the rule set, just focus on how they built upon the basic idea of a CA
• Lenia Resources - lots of videos and additional pages linked from here

Checks

Submit answers to the following on Moodle:

• How is the Lenia system different than a traditional CA?
• How can CA’s be expanded to “grow” and “heal”?