A Synthesis of the Cell2Organ Developmental Model

Over the past two decades, many techniques have been elaborated to simulate artificial, robotic creatures at different scales. After behavioral models in the 1990s, researchers made the robot morphologies evolvable to be better adapted to their environment. More recently, developmental mechanisms of living beings have inspired “artificial embryogeny” and generated smaller creatures composed of tens to thousands of cells. Yet, there is no encompassing “transversal” model that covers multiple scales at once. To address this challenge, our project consists of growing a complete creature with various organs and high-level functionalities from a single cell. For this, we propose a developmental model, Cell2Organ, based on three simulation layers. The first layer represents a chemical solution, in which cells can divide and process substrates through chemical reactions. Its purpose is to develop a metabolism adapted to the environment and allow organisms to perform actions by using accumulated energy. We also present an alternative model for the chemical layer that replaces molecular morphogens with a generative process based on L-systems. The second layer is a hydrodynamic medium, in which cells interact with simulated substrate flows so that they can impact the whole environment. Finally, we describe our plan to extend Cell2Organ with a third, physical layer, which would allow creatures to exhibit motion in a Newtonian world. There, cells will be able to modify their individual shape and affect the overall morphology of the organism.