Focusing on the challenge of fostering the self-assembly of socio-technical networks, we present the application of Morphogenetic Engineering principles in this domain to a 2D spatial case study involving a team of first responders. Our model and simulation illustrate how members of a rescue team could be guided via hand-held devices toward better coordination and positioning at appropriate locations, based on peer-to-peer communication and local landmarks in the environment (such as incidents or exits), without the need for a centralised control centre. Using Raspberry Pi devices, we illustrate this scenario in various situations that require quick decision-making to control and manage. Our work suggests the possibility of novel forms of bottom-up self-organisation among groups of users and machines, in contrast to top-down imposed hierarchies and policies.

The importance of environmental fluctuations in the evolution of living organisms by natural selection has been widely noted by biologists and linked to many important characteristics of life such as modularity, plasticity, genotype size, mutation rate, learning, or epigenetic adaptations. In artificial-life simulations, however, environmental fluctuations are usually seen as a nuisance rather than an essential characteristic of evolution. HetCA is a heterogeneous cellular automata characterized by its ability to generate open-ended long-term evolution and evolutionary progress. In this paper, we propose to measure the impact of different types of environmental fluctuations in HetCA. Our results indicate that environmental changes induce mechanisms analogous to epigenetic adaptation or multilevel selection. This is particularly prevalent in two of the tested fluctuation schemes, which involve a round-robin inhibition of certain cell types, where phenotypic selection seems to occur.