Relational growth grammars - A parallel graph transformation approach with applications in biology and architecture

Abstract

We present the formalism of relational growth grammars. They are a variant of graph grammars with a principal application for plant modelling, where they extend the well-established, but limited formalism of L-systems. The main property is the application of rules in parallel, motivated by the fact that life is fundamentally parallel. A further speciality is the dynamic creation of right-hand sides on rule application. Relational growth grammars have been successfully used not only for plant modelling, but also to model general 3D structures or systems of Artificial Life. We illustrate these applications at several examples, all being implemented using our programming language XL which extends Java and provides an implementation of relational growth grammars. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.