CellularAutomaton 1.0

Two years ago I worked on an interesting research project with a friend. In this project we examined a certain cellular automaton named Langton’s Ants. Cellular automata are infinite grid spaces in which each space possesses a certain state.

Spaces in Langton’s Ants have one of two states, on or off. In this cellular automata, an “ant” traverses the infinite grid space. Each time the ant enters a square it follows a certain set of rules:
1. If the square is ‘on’ the ant rotates 90 degrees clockwise and then moves forward one square.
2. If the square is ‘off’ the ant rotates 90 degrees counterclockwise and the moves forward one square.
3. When the ant leaves a square it switches the status.

Although these rules seem simple, the patterns produced are intriguing. Because of this, I decided to adapt some of the code written for the research project into a screen saver for Mac OS X.

The screen saver randomly generates anywhere from 1 to 5 ants on a grid and then performs the simple rules for each ant. The following image is a pattern created by a single “ant.”