Artificial life (commonly Alife or alife) is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986. There are three main kinds of alife, named for their approaches: soft, from software; hard, from hardware; and wet, from biochemistry. Artificial life imitates traditional biology by trying to recreate biological phenomena. The term "artificial life" is often used to specifically refer to soft alife. Artificial life studies the logic of living systems in artificial environments. The goal is to study the phenomena of living systems in order to come to an understanding of the complex information processing that defines such systems. Also sometimes included in the umbrella term Artificial Life are agent based systems which are used to study the emergent properties of societies of agents. While artificial life is, by definition, alive, artificial life is generally referred to as being confined to a digital environment and existence.

Links and resources.

Contains various java applications related to artificial life.

An AL approach to land warfare. Windows beta software, images and project documentation.

Portal with information on conferences, publications, and activities of the society.

An international scientific society devoted to education and furthering research on adaptive behavior in animals, animats, software agents, and robots.

A sourceforge project for a combination game and simulation that allows interaction with simple artificial ants.

Alastair Channon's artificial life project.

Digital Biology was established in order to conduct research into, and develop technology based on, artificial life.

comp.ai.alife Frequently Asked Questions

A collection of resources related to artificial life. Includes a section for social sciences (social micro-simulation)

CALResCo promotes free world-wide education about Complex Systems

Simulations of group motion in flocks, herds, and schools, along with related phenomena. Includes many links to related applications and research, e.g. Artificial Life.

A group project exploring living 3D aesthetic worlds.

Erik Max Francis' categorized list of links to sites regarding artificial life and related fields.

Some of the main alife topics illustrated by applets or applications. A link section is also available.

Artificial life and genetic algorithm experiments in java and tcl with free source code; 3D doll pictures and web design experiments.

Links to artificial life/intelligence projects, with a collection of links including swarming Java applets.

From the newsgroup comp.ai.alife.

Promotes the artificial life community by offering news, discussions, polls, software. Free registration.

Developer of artificial life worlds as free software with open source code, with the eventual aim of creating true artificial intelligence. Applications include a dungeon generator written in C++, and a shooter game for Windows.

A list of alife resources compiled by Lachlan Cranswick.