Vants and Turmites

The two-dimensional Turing machine is a promising but under used simulation tool for Artificial Life. Single-state 2-D Turing machines exhibit a variety of interesting behaviors, some of which have already been explored. Multistate 2-D Turing machines, despite their potential for simulating even more diverse behaviors, have received little attention to date. We demonstrate the potential of such automata for studying biological phenomena by showing how they can be used to simulate self-similar growth, the spread of disease, and self-reproduction. Some of the results presented here are from investigations that were performed around the time of Dewdney (1989), but they have not been published until now.