Self-organisation and emergence in artificial life: concepts and illustrations

摘要

This article provides an illustrated review of artificial life as a synthetic approach to the study of behaviours, systems and organisms. The article starts with a discussion about the methodological advantages of using bottom-up, instead of top down, approaches for the computational synthesis of natural behaviours. As an outcome of bottom-up modelling, the resulting behaviours synthesised are characterised by two fundamental properties: self-organisation and emergence. The presentation focuses on conceptualising and illustrating self-organisation and emergence in the context of artificial life for the synthesis of behaviours. Two well-known ALife projects are used to promote a discussion of some implications and contributions of ALife, namely, the simulation of collective behaviours of bird flocks; and the construction of nests by wasps. The article is concluded with a discussion of the main current trends and open problems in the field.