For a while now I have been thinking about using a Raspberry Pi with some sort of visual indicator as a form of artificial life simulator, I wanted to create something that would be able to spawn a number of entities that would have random properties and be able to move around and interact with each other, forming a sort of virtual ecosystem; and then experiment with it to see what happens.
So the other week I fired up a Raspberry Pi and began to work on a program with the following goals in mind:
Create a number of artificial lifeforms that can move around a board and have colour/movement properties assigned to them via 3 random numbers; the ‘DNA’ of the life-form – and display them onto an easy-to-observe output.
Have those artificial lifeforms be able to interact with each other to ‘breed’ and pass along their traits to offspring, as well as ‘kill’ each other to keep the population in check.
Have random chance for ‘genetic chaos’ whereby instead of passing along a life-form’s properties to its offspring a random number is inserted into the offspring’s ‘DNA’.
BONUS – plug the code into the Minecraft API and see what random patterns of blocks can be spawned from the artificial life-form’s movements and properties.
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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!