Slime Mould Simulation

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Physarum Polycephalum, is a slime mold that inhabits shady, cool, moist areas, such as decaying leaves and logs. Like slime molds in general, it is sensitive to light; in particular, light can repel the slime mold and be a factor in triggering spores.

This project was done using:
- Java as the code language,
- JavaFX for the graphics and animations,
- A* algorithm for pathfinding.

For any questions, I can be contacted by mail -

Project on github:

OVERVIEW:

QUESTION
Can slime mould design our infrastructure?
That is, can we leave the job of designing routes between places, to a
zero-intelligence organism, thus creating optimal + low cost solutions
to hard + heavy problems?

BACKGROUND
When talking about ‘slime mould’, I actually refer to the specific
organism called ‘Physarum Polycephalum.
From wikipedia - “polycephalum, literally the "many-headed slime", is a
slime mold that inhabits shady, cool, moist areas, such as decaying
leaves and logs.”
The slime mould behaves, and in particular spreads in a very interesting
manner -
It searches for food, and while doing so, it rearranges itself such that the
distance it needs to travel is minimal. That is of interest for the slime
mould, as spreading is costly. To be precise, the mould aimes to find
the ‘sweet spot’ of having a small surface area, while still maintaining
routes to food sources (that are not too small/slim).

WHAT I DID
Using code I tried to mimic the behavior of the slime mould.
I did so by simulating a given city and letting the slime mould spread. It
can essentially spread forever, but after a while it converges when all
the paths it created are already optimal.
After it spreads for a while, the paths it created are left on the screen
(=world), and can be perceived as a new map of that city, with the
infrastructure redefined by the slime mould.

FUTURE WORK
The simulated behavior of the slime mould was achieved with the use of
graph search algorithms. Knowing that this organism has no brain or
intellect, it just comes to show the great potential it has in solving
computationally-hard problems.
Computers embedded with the slime mould’s characteristics are now
being made.