FloraJS is a JavaScript library for simulating natural systems in a web browser. In Flora, the browser is an environment with rules meant to simulate a natural system.
Rules are forces like gravity, friction, and drag. The world is inhabited by autonomous agents that carry properties like mass, width and height. Agents also have behaviors like steer, flock, and attract.
When you combine enough rules, the agents in your system behave is if the system is ‘natural’.
Agents can carry sensors tuned to specific stimuli. They can also attach behaviors to these sensors. For example, if a sensor detects heat, the agent can choose to turn away.
Sensors can be combined for an especially realistic simulation.
When we combine sensors, at some point we stop seeing the individual rules and accept that we’re witnessing something intelligent that could inhabit the real world. This is the premise behind Braitenberg Vehicles, imaginary autonomous vehicles described in Valentino Braitenberg’s book, Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology.
Please checkout the repo's gh-pages for more examples or visit the GitHub repo for a look at the code.
