Jack Walker Undergraduate Dissertation 2017/18

The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants

Supervised by R.Clayton

Abstract

My dissertation project is about L-systems, the structure and shape of plants, and how these two topics are connected. L-systems started as a way to study the development of simple organisms and eventually evolved into a way to study more complex plants. We require more food than ever in our greatly populated world and plant modelling may have the answers to this problem. L-systems would provide a quick and relatively easy way to model plants, which is why it is important to investigate the link between L-systems and plant modelling. The primary aim of the project is to evaluate how well L-systems model real plants and I will create a program to aid this evaluation.