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Motivated by the ability of living cells to form specific shapes and structures, we present a computational approach using distributed genetic programming to discover cell-cell interaction rules for automated shape composition. The key concept is to evolve local rules that direct virtual cells to produce a self-organizing behavior that leads to the formation of a macroscopic, user-defined shape. The interactions of the virtual cells, called Morphogenic Primitives (MPs), are based on chemotaxis-driven aggregation behaviors exhibited by actual living cells. Cells emit a chemical into their environment. Each cell responds to the stimulus by moving in the direction of the gradient of the cumulative chemical field detected at its surface. MPs, though, do not attempt to completely mimic the behavior of real cells. The chemical fields are explicitly defined as mathematical functions and are not necessarily physically accurate. The functions are derived via a distributed genetic programming process. A fitness measure, based on the shape that emerges from the chemical-field-driven aggregation, determines which functions will be passed along to later generations. This paper describes the cell interactions of MPs and a distributed genetic programming method to discover the chemical fields needed to produce macroscopic shapes from simple aggregating primitives.

Motivated by the natural phenomenon of living cells selforganizing into specific shapes and structures, we present an emergent system that utilizes evolutionary computing methods for designing and simulating self-aligning and self-organizing shape primitives. Given the complexity of the emergent behavior, genetic programming is employed to control the evolution of our emergent system. The system has two levels of description. At the macroscopic level, a user-specified, pre-defined shape is given as input to the system. The system outputs local interaction rules that direct morphogenetic primitives (MP) to aggregate into the shape. At the microscopic level, MPs follow interaction rules based only on local interactions. All MPs are identical and do not know the final shape to be formed. The aggregate is then evaluated at the macroscopic level for its similarity to the user-defined shape. In this paper, we present (1) an emergent system that discovers local interaction rules that direct MPs to form user-defined shapes, (2) the simulation system that implements these rules and causes MPs to self-align and self-organize into a user-defined shape, and (3) the robustness and scalability qualities of the overall approach.