A comprehensive overview of the applications of artificial life

Artif Life. 2006 Winter;12(1):153-82. doi: 10.1162/106454606775186455.

Abstract

We review the applications of artificial life (ALife), the creation of synthetic life on computers to study, simulate, and understand living systems. The definition and features of ALife are shown by application studies. ALife application fields treated include robot control, robot manufacturing, practical robots, computer graphics, natural phenomenon modeling, entertainment, games, music, economics, Internet, information processing, industrial design, simulation software, electronics, security, data mining, and telecommunications. In order to show the status of ALife application research, this review primarily features a survey of about 180 ALife application articles rather than a selected representation of a few articles. Evolutionary computation is the most popular method for designing such applications, but recently swarm intelligence, artificial immune network, and agent-based modeling have also produced results. Applications were initially restricted to the robotics and computer graphics, but presently, many different applications in engineering areas are of interest.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Artificial Intelligence*
  • Biological Evolution
  • Computer Graphics
  • Models, Biological
  • Neural Networks, Computer
  • Robotics