Evolving tiles for automated self-assembly design

Self-assembly is a distributed, asynchronous mechanism that is pervasive across natural systems where hierarchical complex structures are built from the bottom-up. The lack of a centralised master plan, no external intervention, and preprogrammed interactions among entities are within its most relevant and technologically appealing properties. This paper tackles the self-assembly Wang tiles designability problem by means of artificial evolution. This research is centred in the use of tiles that are extended with rotation and probabilistic motion, and an evolutionary algorithm using the Morphological Image Analyses method as a fitness function. The obtained results support this approach as a successful engineering mechanism for the computer-aided design of self-assembled patterns.

I. Introduction

Self-assembly systems are ubiquitous in nature and can be found at all scales. At the microscopic level, protein folding, lipids membranes, nucleic acid structures and other complex cell entities are well-known biological examples of self-assembly. Molecular crystals such as the crystalline form of table sugar and rock candy or colloids such as milk, butter and asphalt are everyday cases of self-assembly where molecules are kept together by interactive forces. On the other hand, swarms, school fish and solar systems are macroscopic dynamic self-assembly systems. Furthermore, information systems are yet another field where self-assembly appears as it plays an important role in novel software development techniques [1].