Beyond Robotics

Beyond Robotics, there is another field, artificial life, or Alife, in which biology is modeled. Tom Bay, biologist at University of Delaware, developed a computer program called Tierra. This system sinulated a simple computer so that Ray could have complete control over how it worked. Multiple computer programs competed for resources of processing unit in the simulated computer. Ray placed a single program in a 60,000 word memory and let it run. Like DNA in biological systems, the code was interpreted to produce the process of creature itself, and it was copied to make a child program. There were "Cosmic Rays" that would occasionally randaomnly flip a bit in memory and were copying errors where as a word was being written to memory a random bit within it might flip. Thus mutations appeared. Before long "parasites" less than half the size of original seed program evolved. They were not able to copy themselves, but they could trick a larger program into copying them rather than itself. Soon hyperparasites and social programs that needed each other to reproduce evolved.