The evolution of diversity in the structure and function of artificial organisms

Zusammenfassung

Life on Earth has been shaped by evolutionary processes into a marvelous diversity of form and function, at all levels from molecules to ecosystems. This most fascinating and puzzling phenomenon is being increasingly studied from a computational perspective, defining a new class of computational models and simulations of biological systems. It can be expected that no single conceptual framework can encompass all the aspects of the evolution of diversity. This doctoral dissertation explores this question from three different points of view: the role of developmental processes, the role of evolutionary dynamics, and the interplay between the body and the body¿s control system. Likewise, three different computational models are presented and analyzed, each of them exploring one of these three aspects in a specific domain. Along the way, a wide range of subjects is also explored, from the design and analysis of tensegrity structures to computational models of molecular motors and highly simplified L-systems as models of plant communities. The results can also be applied in evolutionary computation, whether as form-finding methods to evolve structures or as behavior-finding methods to evolve reactive agents.