NAME
avida - Auto-adaptive genetic system for Artificial Life research
SYNOPSIS
avida-viewer [options]
DESCRIPTION
This is the text-screen viewer for the Avida auto-adaptive genetic
system.
Avida is an auto-adaptive genetic system designed primarily for use as
a platform in Digital or Artificial Life research. The Avida system is
based on concepts similar to those employed by the tierra program
developed by Tom Ray. In lay terms, Avida is a digital world in which
simple computer programs mutate and evolve. More technically, it is a
population of self-reproducing strings with a Turing-complete genetic
basis subjected to Poisson-random mutations. The population adapts to
the combination of an intrinsic fitness landscape (self-reproduction)
and an externally imposed (extrinsic) fitness function provided by the
researcher.
By studying this system, one can examine evolutionary adaptation,
general traits of living systems (such as self-organization), and other
issues pertaining to theoretical or evolutionary biology and dynamic
systems. The power of Avida is that it gives us a controllable digital
system in which to study the theories of evolutionary biology. Often,
we can study elements of evolutionary theory that are difficult or
impossible in biological systems.
OPTIONS
-g[enesis] <filename>
Set genesis file to be <filename>
-h[elp]
Help on options (this listing)
-e[vents]
Print a list of all known events
-s[eed] <value>
Set random seed to <value>
-viewer <value>
Sets Viewer to <value>
-v[ersion]
Prints the version number
-set <name> <value>
Overide the genesis file
-l[oad] <filename>
Load a clone file
-loadpop <filename>
Load a saved population file (precedence over load)
-a[nalyze]
Process analyze.cfg instead of normal run.
USAGE
Make a new working directory for the experiment you want to run, and
put the starting data in it. You can copy standard starting data and
modify it with:
cp /usr/share/avida/* . -r
You should run the program from inside that directory.
AUTHOR
Avida is a joint project of the Digital Life Laboratory, headed by
Chris Adami, at the California Institute of Technology
(http://dllab.caltech.edu/) and Richard Lenski’s Microbial Evolution
laboratory at Michigan State university (http://www.msu.edu/~lenski/).
For more info on these groups or their research, please visit the links
above.
This manual page was written by Miriam Ruiz <little_miry@yahoo.es>, for
the Debian project (but may be used by others).
SEE ALSO
There is a directory with some starting data you can use as a base for
your research in /usr/share/doc/alive/data/. You just have to copy the
contents of that directory wherever you want and start running
avida-viewer there. You can find HTML documentation about avida in
/usr/share/doc/alive/html/.
noviembre 23, 2004 AVIDA(1)