Artificial Morphogenesis as an Example of Embodied Computation

Embodied computation is computation in which information processing emerges from and directly governs physical processes. As an example we present artificial morphogenesis, which uses computational processes analogous to those in embryological development in order to assemble complex physical structures. We discuss the requirements for a formalism or programming language for embodied computation oriented toward artificial morphogenesis and present a preliminary design for such a formalism. Use of the formalism is illustrated by several embodied computation problems of increasing complexity.