Cellular Self-Reproducing Automata As a Parallel Processing Model for Botanical Colony Growth Pattern Simulation

A cellular automaton is a model of natural systems composed of many identical components with local interactions. Particularly, self-reproduction property inherent in the cellular automaton is essential for modeling the biological and ecological growth pattern formation. In simulating such behaviour of cellular self-reproducing automata, interactive visual computing allows us to get intuition from the model more easily and quickly. In this paper, we try to visualize the growth of a botanical colony based on Langton’s two-dimensional self-reproducing cellular automaton. The colony consists of a reproducible fringe surrounding a growing core of empty shells. Realistic images of simulated life and death are shown vividly through an interactive visual simulation technique. We also discuss a parallel processing approach as an efficient method for high-speed visual simulation of large-scale cellular automata.