Re: Formalization of the Artificial Life Systems

[David Sumpter]

Hi people,

I've been trying to do some work on this sort of stuff, for simple agents in a 
simple environment. My model is specific to my problem whioch is Honey Bee 
ThermoRegulation.

BI defined bee agents b \in B, the set of all bee agents, to be pairs 
b(t)=(x,y) 
defining their co-ordinates at a point in time. In this way the bees have no 
memory so are very simple. The bees move in a `thermo-environment' which is a 
lattice T_{xy}(t). (Think about the HeatBugs demo). I have defined the movement 
of bees as operations on sets of possible points to which they can move 
dependent on values in T. Since these rules contain a random element the set B 
and lattice T are a stochastic dynamical system. 

I've managed to prove a few simple things about one dimensional thermospaces 
with simple bees. I'm trying to prove some more interesting things in two 
dimensions. It gets a lot harder. It does however help do things like set 
parameters sensibly, proving they do not contradict assumptions made in your 
model.

I'd love hear from anyone doing similar stuff.....I haven't seen anything like 
it. One mathematician here at UMIST said to me "Oh they do stuff like this for 
Cellular Automata but generally its a bit namby pamby, you may as well have a 
go. One advantage is you don't have to have a real mathematics background to do 
this sort of thing." Hmmm.

David.






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