DigiHive: Artificial Chemistry Environment for Modeling of Self-Organization Phenomena

The article presents the DigiHive system, an artificial chemistry simulation environment, and the results of preliminary simulation experiments leading toward building a self-replicating system resembling a living cell. The two-dimensional environment is populated by particles that can bond together and form complexes of particles. Some complexes can recognize and change the structures of surrounding complexes, where the functions they perform are encoded in their structure in the form of Prolog-like language expressions. After introducing the DigiHive environment, we present the results of simulations of two fundamental parts of a self-replicating system, the work of a universal constructor and a copying machine, and the growth and division of a cell-like wall. At the end of the article, the limitations and arising difficulties of modeling in the DigiHive environment are presented, along with a discussion of possible future experiments and applications of this type of modeling.

Automated summary

The article describes the DigiHive system, which is an artificial chemistry simulation environment, and presents the results of initial simulation experiments conducted to create a self-replicating system resembling a living cell. In the two-dimensional environment, particles can bond together to form complexes, and some complexes can recognize and alter the structures of nearby complexes. The functions performed by these complexes are encoded in their structure using a Prolog-like language expression. The article also discusses the limitations and challenges of modeling in the DigiHive environment, and explores potential future experiments and applications of this type of modeling.