TITLE: Dynamics, Emergent Computation, and Evolution in Cellular
Automata
SPEAKER: Wim Hordijk
LOCATION: Santa Fe Complex, 632 Agua Fria, Main Commons
RSVP here and order lunch if you're interested:
http://wedtech825.eventbrite.com/
ABSTRACT: Many systems in nature produce complicated patterns that
emerge from local interactions of simple individual components that
live in some spatially extended world, without the existence of a
central control. Examples of emergent pattern formation in such
decentralized spatially extended systems include spiral waves in
aggregating amoebae, the foraging paths of social insects, and
synchronized oscillations in the brain. Often, these emergent patterns
give rise to some form of globally coordinated behavior, or global
information processing. For example, amoebae decide when and where to
aggregate to reproduce, an ant colony decides what the shortest path
is to some food source, and the brain classifies sensory inputs.
This global information processing in decentralized spatially extended
systems, mediated by emergent pattern formation, is known as emergent
computation. However, there is still little understanding of how the
dynamics (i.e., the pattern forming behavior) of these systems gives
rise to emergent computation, or how such systems and their behaviors
and (emergent) computational abilities have evolved.
In this talk, I will give an overview of the Evolving Cellular
Automata (EvCA) project, which provides a framework for studying the
relations among dynamics, emergent computation, and evolution in
decentralized spatially extended systems. In the EvCA project, a
genetic algorithm (a simple model of an evolutionary process) is used
to evolve cellular automata (simple models of decentralized spatially
extended systems) to perform certain computational tasks that require
global information processing. The results of this research project
provide significant insights into emergent computation and its
evolution.
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