Identification of functionality during development on a virtual Sblock FPGA

Artificial development is a newer approach aimed at achieving complex solutions. This work aims to develop electronic circuits although the results presented are, in fact, of a more general interest to artificial development research. In theory, a circuit may be described by a relatively simple genotype which is then grown to the final circuit. One of the challenges that exists, is how and when to interpret the functionality of the growing phenotype i.e. the growing circuit solution. This challenge is addressed. The development process described is a rule-based system on a nonuniform cellular automata topology. The experiments presented investigate the effect of different start states as well as considering the number of state and development steps in the development process.