G52AIM

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE METHODS

ARTIFICIAL LIFE
March 31st, 2010

Student Name: NGUYEN VINH HIEN

Student ID: 005560
Instructor: PROFESSOR ANDRZEJ BARGIELA
 School of Computer Science &
Information Technology

MARKING SCHEME
SPRING 2009/2010

Student Name: NGUYEN VINH HIEN

Student No: 005560

Module Code: G52AIM

Title of Module: Artificial Intelligence Methods

Coursework Title: Investigative Report

Marks Marks
Attributes
Allotted Awarded
1. Theoretical Background 3
2. Application Examples 2
3. Advantages and Limitations 3
4. Style and References 2

Total Marks

Examiner’s Comments:
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND.................................................... 2
2. ARTIFICIAL LIFE MODEL EXAMPLE............................................. 3
2.1 ZAMIN ..................................................................... 3
2.1.1 ZAMIN ARITIFICIAL LIFE MODEL .......................... 4
2.1.2 ZAMIN’S UNDERLAYING STRUCTURE .................... 4
2.1.3 THE SIX AGENTS................................................ 4
2.1.4 SIMPLE ORGANISMS’ GENERAL STRUCTURE .......... 5
2.1.5 ANIMALS GENERAL STRUCTURE ........................... 5
2.1.6 AGENTS GENERAL STRUCTURE ............................ 7
2.2 PACKING PROBLEMS.................................................. 7
3. ADVANTAGES AND LIMITATIONS .............................................. 11
3.1 ADVANTAGES ........................................................... 11
3.2 LIMITATIONS............................................................ 12
4. REFERENCES .......................................................................... 12

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 1. Theoretical Background:
Artificial life (Alife) has been a new discipline since 1980s, which is the
latest development direction of the computer science following Artificial
Intelligence (AI). It was name by Christopher Langton, an American
computer scientist, in 1986 [1]. Alife is interdisciplinary field of computer
science, biology, physics, mathematics, as well as philosophers and artists.
There are three categories of Alife: software, hardware, and wetware
applying techniques of biochemical laboratory.

Christopher Langton defined Alife as follow [2]: “Alife is a discipline

that studies natural life by attempting to recreate biological phenomena from
scratch within computers and other artificial media. And it complements the
traditional analytic approach of traditional biology with a synthetic approach
by taking apart living organisms to see how they work, one attempts to put
together systems that behave like living organisms”. More specific, the
discipline of Alife studies the synthesis of forms and functions that appear
alive. It allows scientists to study about biology system outside the
observable accidents of history.

Eyal Reingold and Johnathan Nightingale [3] stated that Alife relates to
Biology in such a same way as AI relates to Psychology. It has been often
said that the goal of Alife is to offer a synthetic perspective which means it
starts with a simple rule, concept and combines them to see what complex
phenomena are produced [3]. The reason why makes Alife become a
research pursuit is that how accurately computer models developed through
Alife have reflected people’s observations of biological life. In 2000, Rodney
Brooks [4] gave the relationship between matter and life. In order to build
artificial systems which exhibit properties of living organisms, AI and Alife
scientists have to understand these properties. AI scientists focus on
perception, cognition, and generation of action, whereas Alife scientists pay
attention on evolution, reproduction, morphogenesis, and metabolism.
Furthermore, according to the International Society for Complexity,
Information, and Design (ISCID) [5], although AI and Alife are overlapping,
they are still different in their approach and history, which is Alife is
concerned with specific life-oriented algorithms (e.g. genetic algorithm can
mimic nature, thus relating to biology), whereas AI concerned with looking
at how human intelligence can be replicated, thus relating to psychology.
There are still some minor definitions that can contribute to get a full picture

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about what Alife is; for example, Alife is the interdisciplinary enterprise
investigating the fundamental properties of living systems through
simulation and synthesis of life-like processes in artificial media [6]; and
Alife is the study of life through the use of human-made analogous of living
systems [7]; Alife is a field of computer science which deals with modeling
real life and solving problems using these models [9].

Agent-based modeling and simulations are approaches which have

been used to perform Alife experiments. In the experiments, they replicate
real or potential behaviors of actual or possible complex framework. The
goal of agent modeling is to allow experimentation with simulated complex
system. And in order to do that, it uses sets of agents and frameworks for
simulating the agent’s decision and interactions [12]. These are some rules
that agent models can be dependent on to study how patterns emerge and
reveal behavioral patterns at the macro or system level [12]. These rules
are Rational Individual Behavior, Bounded Rationality, Satisficing, etc.

The applications of Alife are widely applied in many areas. It has been
used in many practical applications of biological principles in the technology
of computer hardware and software, synthetic chemistry to model new
compounds, spacecraft, medicine, nanotechnology, industrial fabrication,
etc.

2. Artificial life model example:

2.1. Zamin:

There are different types of Alife environments, for example, cellular

automata and artificial chemistry and ecosystem simulations. Among of
them, ecosystem simulations are most commonly used. There are many
examples of ecosystem, such as Echo, ERL, LEE, SWARM, Zamin, etc. It is
believed by Zadeh, S.H. et al. [9] that Zamin is a suitable ecosystem for
studying the evolution of high level physical and mental structures,
mechanisms and skills of primitive creatures.

Zamin, Zoological Agents for Modification and Improvement of

Neocrea-tures, is an artificial life ecosystem. It has been designed for
cognitive studies on evolution of complex behavior, decision making
methods, and living strategies. So far, simple models for decision making,
generalization and abstraction, environment perception and pleasure
computation are developed and tested in Zamin [9]. The aim of this model is

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to construct a system which simulates different types of living strategies,
climate, controlling, and communication systems [8].

2.1.1 Zamin Artificial Life Model:

Zamin environment is a lattice that contains three major inhabitant

groups inside. They are simple organisms, animals, and agents. As defined
by Ramin Halavati et al. [8], simple organisms get material from the world
and reproduce, but they cannot move, communicate, or respond to stimuli.
In contrast, animals can move and choose their actions, they can manipulate
simple organisms and objects, trade information or energy, but they can
only access the world using a limited passage. Agents have different access
to the world and can control the world flows and cycles. Animals can
reproduce sexually or asexually and they can communicate through two
methods: they can broadcast a message in a selectable range or to transfer
it directly to a specific mate [8]. Every creature must have a minimum level
of energy to live and act. Each creature can absorb materials directly from
the world and convert them into energy. After that, creatures release items
to the world to flow again in world’s material and energy cycle [8].

2.1.2 Zamin’s underlying structure:

In Zamin environment, there are six agents being responsible for

creating and destructing creatures, flowing the time, managing the position
and resources, applying creatures’ will [8].

2.1.3 The Six Agents:

The Lives Lord, Espand: responsible for creating and managing

population control for all creatures.

The Times’ Lord, Zorwaan: responsible for timing control.

The Positions Lords, Hormoz: responsible for objects and creature

transfers in the world.

The Resources’ Lord, Kiumars: responsible for managing world

resources and energy transformation.

The Gates’ Lord, Ashtaad: responsible for controlling animals’ access

to the world level.

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 The Actions Lord, Mitra: in charge of accepting creature’s requests and
applying their will in the world.

2.1.4 Simple Organisms’ General Structure:

Simple organism structure is used to design creatures. A simple

organism requests some resources, absorbs resources to get essential
energy for living, or produce seeds, and create another organism. Organism
must implement functions in order to create a creature. Simple properties
and functions can be seen in Table 1.

Property Description
Species Specifies the species that this creature belongs to.
Name The creature’s name.
Age The creature’s age.
Position The creature’s location in world map.
Is Alive Indicates if creature is alive or is dead.
Energy Indicates how much energy creature has now.
Resources The amount of resources that this creature owns. There are four
sets of resources:
 The absorbed resource which is used to build up body, get
energy, or create seeds.
 The resources that are part of the body and cannot be used
for any other tasks.
 The waist resources which are the result of previous
reactions and must be released.
 The embryo resources which are gathered to produce seeds.
Table 1: Simple Organisms’ Properties

Source: Extracted from [8]

2.1.5 Animals’ General Structure:

Animals have more properties and actions compared to simple

organisms and must respond to more messages. Lists of action choices,
properties, and messages can be seen in table 2, 3, and 4.

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 Property Description
Hatched Specifies whether the organism is still in eggs or has hatched out.
Sex Organism’s sex, which can be male, female, or asexual.
Pregnant Tell if the organism is pregnant and producing some eggs.
Orientation Specifies the direction of the creature’s face, which can be up,
down, left, or right.
Attack Skill Organism’s performance in attacking another creature.
Defense Skill Organism’s performance in defending an attack from another
creature.
Table 2: Animals’ Extended Properties over Single Organisms

Source: Extracted from [8]

Action Description
Hatch A creature that is still in egg can make request and get out of
egg.
Move To move to an adjacent location.
Eat To eat something and absorb its resources.
Turn To change animal’s orientation.
Mate To mate another animal or start pregnancy.
Lay Egg To lay some eggs
Internal To transfer some of the absorbed resources to the body or the
Resource embryo that will be put in egg.
Transfer
Communicate To transfer a message to another animal or to broadcast a
message.
Give To give some resources to another creature or on egg.
Resources
Table 3: Animals’ Action Choices

Source: Extracted from [8]

Message Description
Create A creature receives this message when it is about to be created. A
genome may be enclosed by the message.
Choose Action Each creature receives one “Choose Action” message at each time
step. The world view is enclosed by this message and can be used
to select action and experience the result of the selected action.
Die Once the creature is about to die, it receive this message.

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Mating Once the creature requests to mate another creature, the second
Proposal one receives this message and a view of the requestor. The
receiver can reply its opinion on mating.
Mate Once a creature replies its opinion, this message is sent back to
Request’s requestor. Then requestor can reply whether it wants to commit
Result dating.
Get Genome Once two creatures have mated, the male one receives a
for Mating message to pass a copy of its genome for the creation of the
embryo’s genome.
Begin Once female creature receives this message and a copy of male’s
Pregnancy genome to start pregnancy.
Get Resources Once an animal requests to lay eggs, it receives this message to
and Genome pass the genomes and resources for the eggs.
for Eggs
Text Message Once an animal receives a text message from another one, this
message is received, enclosed by message’s text and sender’s
identity.
Table 4: Animals’ Received Messages

Source: Extracted from [8]

2.1.6 Agents’ General Structure:

Six agents predefined in Zamin are the most powerful creatures, and
new agent can be added when necessary. In agent general structure, all
control and world running processes are done by agents. Thus, it is believe
to be easier to use and extend than conventional Zamin model. In order to
know in depth the extension of Zamin model, please refer to [8].

The main advantage of new model is the modularity. In order to alter

something in the new model, only need to rewrite one message handler for
one agent and register the agent, and for Alife which have may interconnect
parts, this is a big advantage [8]. However, this new model has two
disadvantages. First, the designer has to find a part which is needed to
change among too many parts, and second, once the changing part is found,
changing it could affect others.

2.2 Packing Problems:

Packing problems arise in many application areas such as pallet

loading, textile cutting, container stuffing, and placement problems. They

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solve optimization problems about how to find a good arrangement of
multiple objects in a large containing region without overlap; thus it is likely
to maximize the material utilization and minimize wasted area. In order to
solve optimization of cutting lines, this model is implemented in Zamin
agent-based artificial ecosystem [8]. The approach is based on group-
making policies of agents [11].

Each shape is represented by an agent. The agents’ relations specify

their relative position and there are no overlapping friend agents. When a
group of friend agents is formed, the friendship patterns describe the
arrangement of their shapes. Then the friendship patterns are duplicated
and some of the relations get permanent. With this iterative approach, the
quantity of the good groups increases gradually and more acceptable
solutions appear [11]. Figure 1 shows the possible relations of two arbitrary
shapes, and figure 3 shows the diagram of entire optimization process.
(More detail about the optimization process can be found in “A Novel
Evolutionary Approach for Optimization of Two Dimensional Irregular Shapes
Allocation” article [11])

Figure 1: Possible relations for two arbitrary shapes and the

representation of one sample relation

Source: Extracted from [11]

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 Figure 2: A Sample of the Optimization Process

Source: Extracted from [11]

Figure 2 illustrates a sample of an optimization process. Stage 1 shows initial

agent pool with some copies of shapes that would be combined together. Stage
2 and 3 shows pool containing shapes after once and twice gather. In stage 4,
every combined shape is duplicated. Finally, stage 5 depicts that the whole
groups are divided into smaller groups of agents. The process will continue until
when an acceptable group is found.

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Figure 3: Diagram of the optimization process

Source: Extracted from [11]

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 Figure 3: Average waste area with different shapes number. Vertical
axis: average wasted area. Horizontal axis: Shapes number

Source: Extracted from [11]

Figure 3 shows the average waste area for different number of shapes,
and it also states that there is no relation between number of shapes needed
to optimize and the waster area.

This approach is used in applications for cutting sheets and some

comparisons with other contributions and in some tests that can arrange
successful the requested shapes and its performance does not degrade with
increment of shapes count [11].

3. Advantages and Limitations:

3.1. Advantages:

Because the field of Alife is related to biology; therefore, it makes

biologist feel interested in. Today, biologists can have a new way to learn
about life. Thus, the approach of Alife is synthetic rather than reductionist.
The major advantage of looking at life from this perspective is to help
scientists recreate life in a different medium, and no longer limited to
carbon-based life system. When scientists examine organisms of the Earth,
they can discover things that define life. Thus, building life from Alife
perspective can help scientists find characteristic and principle of life.

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 Other advantage of Alife is it can be applied to real-world problems,
such as being used for researches on many different subjects from
morphogenesis of corals [13] to the role of suicide [14] in a community.

Last but not least, synthetic approach can be seen in synthetic

chemistry, which is a field to create and mix chemical compounds which are
not found in nature. It not only gives scientists a better understanding the
theory of chemical phenomena, but also allows us to create new materials
and chemicals.

From above advantages, Alife has been used greatly to technology in

the fields of computers, robots, medicine, nanotechnology and other areas.

3.2. Limitations:

So far, Alife is mostly based on fixed, static algorithms. From the

definition of Christopher Langton [2], Alife should have ability to possess
consciousness, and it should be based on evolution rather than static, fixed
algorithms. The algorithms limit Alife to a specific task or specific way of
thinking; make it incapable of achieving a certain level of thought. But real
life should be able to think and do anything to its further extent [10] which
means Alife should be allowed to develop its own ideas, to learn, to grow
and to change by itself.

4. References:
[1] Robert A. Wilson, Frank C. Keil (1999), “The MIT encyclopedia of the
cognitive sciences”, The MIT Press, p.37

[2]Artificial Life, online, retrieved 17 March 2010, available at

http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AITopics/ArtificialLife#cgl

[3] Eyal Reingold and Johnathan Nightingale, Artificial Life, online, retrieved
17 March 2010, available at
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/ai/Alife .html

[4] Rodney Brooks (August 2000), “Artificial life-From Robot Dreams to

Reality”, Nature 406, p.945-947.

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[5] What is the difference between Alife and Artificial Intelligence, online,
retrieved 17 March 2010, available at
https://alifedegrees.com/whatisalife/aiVsAl/

[6] Luis M. Rocha , Mark Bedau, Dario Floreano, Robert Goldstone,

Alessandro Vespignani, and Larry Yaeger (3-7 June, 2006), online, retrieved
17 March 2010, available at http://www.alifex.org/

[7] Wikipedia, Artificial Life, online, retrieved 17 March 2010, available at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Life

[8] Ramin Halavati, Saeed B. Shouraki, Saman H. Zadeh, Pujan Ziaie, Caro
Lucas (2004), “Zamin, an Agent Based Artificial Life Model”, IEEE Computer
Society , Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Hybrid
Intelligent Systems, p.160 - 165.
[9] Zadeh, S.H., Halavati, R., Shouraki, S.B. (2004), “Emerging simple
emotional states in Zamin artificial world”, Proceedings of World Automation
Congress, p.43 – 48.
[10] Biology – Kenyon College, Artificial Life, online, retrieved 17 March
2010, available at
http://biology.kenyon.edu/slonc/bio3/AI/A_LIFE/a_life.html
[11] Ramin Halavati, Saeed B. Shouraki, Mahdieh Noroozian, and Saman H.
Zadeh (2005), “A Novel Evolutionary Approach for Optimization of Two
Dimensional Irregular Shapes Allocation”, World Academy of Science,
Engineering and Technology.
[12] Andrew Adanmatzky, Maciej Komosinski (2005), “Artificial Life Model in
Software”, Springer.
[13] R.M.H.Merks, A. Hoekstra, J.Kaandorp. P. Sloot (2003), "A Problem
Solving Environment for Modelling Stony Coral Morphogenesis", Proceedings
of 3rd International Conference on Computational Sciences, Saint Petersburg,
Russia.
[14] S.Mascaro, K.B. Korb., A.E. Nicholson, "Suicide as an Evolutionary
Stable Strategy", Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Artificial
Life, p. 120-132.

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