EMERGENT PROPERTIES IN THE BEHAVIOR OF A VIRTUAL SPIDER ROBOT

Using a virtual spider robot, we studied hypotheses about the weaving behaviour of orb spiders. Our model spiders built virtual webs that mi micked perfectly the visual architecture of real webs of the garden cr oss spider Araneus diadematus. The matching of capture spiral and auxi liary spiral pitch was an apparently emergent property in both types o f web. This validated our interpretation of the garden spider's web-bu ilding decision rules, which use strictly local interactions with prev iously placed threads to generate global architecture.