OCA:Langton's loops
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Langton's loops are a specific type of artificial life in a cellular automaton discovered in 1984 by Christopher Langton. They consist of a loop of cells containing genetic information, which flows continuously around the loop and out along an "arm", which will become the daughter loop. The "genes" instruct it to make three left turns, completing the loop, which then disconnects from its parent.
Variants
Modified variations exist that grant it life-like properties, such as "dying" at the end of its life cycle, response to evolutionary pressure (generally in the form of competition for space), and a form of sexual reproduction via the exchange of "genetic material".
Byl's loop
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Byl's loop is a 7-state variation of Langton's loops with a smaller replicating loop (12 cells as compared with Langton's 86, made possible by removing the inner shelth at the cost of reduced flexibility. Byl's automaton consisted of an array of 12 chips — of which 4 or 5 could be counted as the instruction tape — and 43 transition rules, while Langton's device consisted of some 10×15 chips, including an instruction tape of 33 chips, plus some 190 transition rules.
Chou-Reggia loop
In 1993, H.-H. Chou and J.A. Reggia further reduced the loop by removing all of the shelths, however this variant does not reduce the state count.
See also
External links
- Langton's loops at Wikipedia
- Byl's loop at Wikipedia