Conway’s Game of Life and Cellular Automata

http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html

Conway’s game of life is always a fun thing to show kids learning about computer science.

Here is a nice, simple applet to play around with the Game of Life

http://www.ibiblio.org/lifepatterns/

Another good one:

http://vlab.infotech.monash.edu.au/simulations/cellular-automata/game-of-life/

If you really want to keep up with the world of GoL:

http://pentadecathlon.com/lifeNews/index.php

An epidemic simulator

http://vlab.infotech.monash.edu.au/simulations/cellular-automata/epidemic/

Here’s a simple ant colony simulator:

http://vlab.infotech.monash.edu.au/simulations/swarms/ant-sort/

breve: a 3d Simulation Environment for Multi-Agent Simulations and Artificial Life

http://www.spiderland.org/

breve is a free, open-source software package which makes it easy to build 3D simulations of multi-agent systems and artificial life. Users define the behaviors of agents in a 3D world and observe how they interact. Agents behaviors can be written in Python, or using a simple scripting language called “steve”. breve includes physical simulation and collision detection so you can simulate realistic creatures, and an OpenGL display engine so you can visualize your simulated worlds.

breve is available for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows

Artificial Life in Computer Graphics

http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/art_life/art_life0.htm

Has some videos that might be of interest to the students.

Artificial Life through Java Examples

http://www.generation5.org/content/2003/alifejava.asp

From the Generation 5 Web site, a high quality set of notes and applets.

“his article will present several well-known, simple cellular automata along with example Java applets. The cellular automata we will look at include Langton’s Ants, Conway’s Life, Conway’s Self-replicated Loop, Wolfram’s one-dimensional automata and Termites.”

Applets for Neural Networks and Artificial Life

Links to many, many applets about AI and neural nets.

http://staff.aist.go.jp/utsugi-a/Lab/Links.html

Game of Life Applet

http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Combinatorics/Life.shtml

An applet that implements Conway’s transition rules. Has lots of controls for changing the way it works.

PlantStudio Botanical Illustration Software

http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/PlantStudio/index.htm

PlantStudio Botanical Illustration Software is a tool for creating 3D plant models and 2D illustrations. PlantStudio simulates herbaceous (non-woody) plants like wildflowers and cut flowers, vegetables, weeds, grasses, and herbs using a parameter-driven simulation of plant growth and structure. You can “grow” plants over their life cycles, producing lifelike images at any age. You can design, animate and breed a wide variety of plants. By using the “evolutionary arts” of variation and selection in the plant breeder, you can quickly and easily create whole families of unique plants for your 3D scenes.

Evolve Software – simulator of life

http://www.stauffercom.com/evolve4/

Evolve 4.0 is a simulator of evolution using a simplified 2-dimensional universe. This software lets you create new simulations, run them, and visualize the behavior of the evolving creatures.

The first version of this software was created in 1996. Fortunately, it has evolved (just like the creatures that live in the simulator) into an awsome piece of software. The most recent version is a complete windows application with a well designed GUI and lots of features for examining the evolved creatures.

Eric Weisstein’s Treasure Trove of Cellular Automata

http://www.ericweisstein.com/encyclopedias/life/

Lots of animated graphics of cellular automata

Evolve Software – simulator of life

http://www.stauffercom.com/evolve4/

Evolve 4.0 is a simulator of evolution using a simplified 2-dimensional universe. This software lets you create new simulations, run them, and visualize the behavior of the evolving creatures.

The first version of this software was created in 1996. Fortunately, it has evolved (just like the creatures that live in the simulator) into an awsome piece of software. The most recent version is a complete windows application with a well designed GUI and lots of features for examining the evolved creatures.