Paterson's worms are a family of cellular automata devised in 1971 by Mike Paterson and John Horton Conway to model the behaviour and feeding patterns of certain prehistoric worms. In the model, a worm moves between points on a triangular grid along line segments, representing food. Its turnings are determined by the configuration of eaten and uneaten line segments adjacent to the point at which the worm currently is. Despite being governed by simple rules the behaviour of the worms can be extremely complex, and the ultimate fate of one variant is still unknown.
The worms were studied in the early 1970s by Paterson, Conway and Michael Beeler, described by Beeler in June 1973,[1] and presented in November 1973 in Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American.[2]
Electronic Arts' 1983 game Worms? is an interactive implementation of Paterson's worms, where each time a worm has to turn in a way that it lacks a rule for, it stops and lets the user choose a direction, which sets that rule for that worm.
- ^ Beeler, Michael (June 1973). "Paterson's Worm". Artificial Intelligence Memo. No. 290. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. hdl:1721.1/6210.
- ^ Gardner, Martin (November 1973). "Mathematical Games: Fantastic patterns traced by programmed 'worms'". Scientific American. 229 (5): 116–123. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1173-116.
