ADAPTIVE FLUX MORPHOLOGIES
SLIME MOULD. DIGITAL SIMULATION
5.2 5-10 The sensing distance responds to the maximum reach to locate food of each cell that forms the slime mould.
SENSING DISTANCE
5-11 The sensing angle is the range of vision of each cell that forms the slme mould.
SENSING ANGLE < 360
Extracting Parameters During the physical slime mould experiments, we observed the growth and foraging behaviour of the mould in order to extract parameters that could be translated into algorithmic instructions (Fig. 5-9). These parameters would later serve as the guiding forces for creating a bio-mimetic algorithm based on the behaviours of the slime mould for generating networks. The first important parameter that we observed was a sensing distance restriction. The indirect growth of the network branches suggests that there is a limit to the distance at which the mould can sense food sources (Fig. 5-10). If there were no restriction on the sensing distance, all of the network branches would be straight lines connecting food sources. The second parameter that we observed was
a restriction on the angle that the mould can sense. If the mould had a perfect 360 degree sensing angle, the growth of the network would be unidirectional towards the closest food source. However, the fact that the mould begins its growth radially suggests that there is a restriction on this angle which limits the sensing capability of the mould (Fig. 5-11).
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