Abstract
A variety of models of self-reproduction process have been proposed since von Neumann initiated this field. Almost all of them are described within the framework of two-dimensional cellular automata. They are heavily dependent on or limited by the peculiar properties of the two dimensional lattice spaces, but such properties are irrelevant to the essential nature of self-reproduction. In this paper, we introduce a new framework called “graph automata” to obtain a natural description of complicated spatio-temporal developmental processes. As an illustrative example, a self-reproduction of Turing machine, which requires very long description by conventional cellular automata, is shown in a simple and straightforward formulation.
