  Reproduction, development, and individual interactions are essential topics
in artificial life. The cellular automata, which can handle these in a
composite way, is highly restricted in its form and behavior because it
represents life as a pattern of cells. In contrast, the virtual creatures
proposed by Karl Sims have a very high degree of freedom in terms of morphology
and behavior. However, they have limited expressive capacity in terms of those
viewpoints. This study carefully extracts the characteristics of the cellular
automata and Sims models to propose a new artificial life model that can
simulate reproduction, development, and individual interactions while
exhibiting high expressive power for morphology and behavior. The simulation
was performed by sequentially reading a book with genetic information and
repeatedly executing four actions: expansion, connection, disconnection, and
transition. The virtual creatures in the proposed model exhibit unique survival
strategies and lifestyles and acquire interesting properties in reproduction,
development, and individual interactions while having freedom in morphology and
behavior.
