Coevolution produces an arms race among virtual plants

Abstract

Creating interesting virtual worlds is a difficult task. We are using a variant of genetic programming to automatically create plants for a virtual environment. The plants are represented as context-free Lindenmayer systems. OpenGL is used to visualize and evaluate the plants. Our plants have to collect virtual sunlight through their leaves in order to reproduce successfully. Thus we have realized an interaction between the plant and its environment. Plants are either evaluated separately or all individuals of a population at the same time. The experiments show that during coevolution plants grow much higher compared to rather bushy plants when plants are evaluated in isolation.