title: Biomaker CA: a Biome Maker project using Cellular Automata
summary: We introduce Biomaker CA: a Biome Maker project using Cellular Automata (CA).
  In Biomaker CA, morphogenesis is a first class citizen and small seeds need to
  grow into plant-like organisms to survive in a nutrient starved environment and
  eventually reproduce with variation so that a biome survives for long
  timelines. We simulate complex biomes by means of CA rules in 2D grids and
  parallelize all of its computation on GPUs through the Python JAX framework. We
  show how this project allows for several different kinds of environments and
  laws of 'physics', alongside different model architectures and mutation
  strategies. We further analyze some configurations to show how plant agents can
  grow, survive, reproduce, and evolve, forming stable and unstable biomes. We
  then demonstrate how one can meta-evolve models to survive in a harsh
  environment either through end-to-end meta-evolution or by a more surgical and
  efficient approach, called Petri dish meta-evolution. Finally, we show how to
  perform interactive evolution, where the user decides how to evolve a plant
  model interactively and then deploys it in a larger environment. We open source
  Biomaker CA at: https://tinyurl.com/2x8yu34s .
paper_authors._id: 64b7594fb5d293ec959d9d66
paper_authors.name: Ettore Randazzo
paper_authors.status: claimed_verified
paper_authors.statusLastChangedAt: 2023-07-20T07:17:35.100Z
paper_authors._id: 64b806ff037d6452a32407a4
paper_authors.avatarUrl: /avatars/d66f6a4af22936fcc3409cbdf5318f41.svg
paper_authors.fullname: Ettore Randazzo
paper_authors.type: user
paper_authors.user: oteret
paper_authors._id: 64b7594fb5d293ec959d9d67
paper_authors.name: Alexander Mordvintsev
paper_title: Biomaker CA: a Biome Maker project using Cellular Automata
paper_summary: We introduce Biomaker CA: a Biome Maker project using Cellular Automata (CA).
  In Biomaker CA, morphogenesis is a first class citizen and small seeds need to
  grow into plant-like organisms to survive in a nutrient starved environment and
  eventually reproduce with variation so that a biome survives for long
  timelines. We simulate complex biomes by means of CA rules in 2D grids and
  parallelize all of its computation on GPUs through the Python JAX framework. We
  show how this project allows for several different kinds of environments and
  laws of 'physics', alongside different model architectures and mutation
  strategies. We further analyze some configurations to show how plant agents can
  grow, survive, reproduce, and evolve, forming stable and unstable biomes. We
  then demonstrate how one can meta-evolve models to survive in a harsh
  environment either through end-to-end meta-evolution or by a more surgical and
  efficient approach, called Petri dish meta-evolution. Finally, we show how to
  perform interactive evolution, where the user decides how to evolve a plant
  model interactively and then deploys it in a larger environment. We open source
  Biomaker CA at: https://tinyurl.com/2x8yu34s .
paper_ai_keywords: Cellular Automata (CA) morphogenesis nutrient-starved environment meta-evolution end-to-end meta-evolution Petri dish meta-evolution interactive evolution 2D grids GPU parallelization JAX framework