Work

Independent work / WebGPU

Intelligent Lattice Simulation Environment

A browser-based laboratory for soft bodies, local control, and movement.

Morphology-specific movement

Overview

I am building a simulation environment in which particle-and-spring bodies discover useful movement through their own morphology and local coordination.

It supports multiple lattices with different structures. Each lattice organism uses local sensing, short-lived state, and messages passed through its graph to find and apply a movement solution that fits its body, producing emergent locomotion.

The aim is for separate lattices to reach targets, change shape, and work through obstructions by finding their own solutions, then to observe how those solutions differ between morphologies.

Body authoring, live simulation, experiment control, and behavioral inspection are kept in the same environment so new forms and control approaches can be tested quickly.

Current spring-only navigation

The lattice compresses through the narrow opening, then follows and begins collecting a newly placed target path. Recorded 30 August 2026.

From authoring to a denser adversarial setup

A lower-particle lattice organism is assembled in the Body Editor and stamped into the live simulation. The recording then cuts to the crowded obstacle field, where it moves alongside several other organisms, including four-armed morphologies. Recorded 30 August 2026.

Distributed control

Movement system

What the controller can change

  1. 01Morphology

    Particles and springs form the body, including its physical limits and the paths through which signals can travel.

  2. 02Local state

    Each part acts from nearby sensory input and short-lived internal state rather than a complete view of the body.

  3. 03Communication

    Bounded messages move through the spring graph, allowing coordination without a central movement script.

  4. 04Physical authority

    The controller may alter existing spring target lengths. It cannot push the body or steer it directly toward a target.

How a useful movement is found

Each lattice forms its own neural network at runtime, shaped by the particles and spring links that make up its body. The network learns as the simulation runs and adapts to structural changes, including newly added connections and tears that break existing ones.

Each particle works from local observations, short-lived internal state and messages exchanged with connected neighbours. Using the available actions in a movement dictionary, it learns how to manipulate the spring links extending from it. These actions change the springs’ target lengths within the simulation’s physical limits.

After the simulation advances, predicted effects are compared with observed outcomes. Feedback from progress, stability and obstruction informs subsequent decisions, allowing the system to refine useful coordination and explore alternatives.

Movement emerges from these local actions interacting across the body and with its environment. Different lattice structures can therefore develop different ways of moving, deforming and working through obstacles.

Runtime
WebGPU, WGSL, TypeScript, browser simulation
Body
Particle-and-spring lattice with editable morphology
Actuation
Changes to existing spring target lengths only
Status
Active independent research

Development path

Development

From Unity agents to a purpose-built simulator

The project began in Unity as an experiment in groups of self-connecting agents. Each agent carried the state and rules needed to connect with copies of itself, exchange messages, fill local pools, and expand or contract the spacing between linked copies.

Those local pools fed group votes. Navigation began to emerge from their combined decisions rather than from a single agent acting as a central controller.

I later restarted the work from scratch as a standalone browser project to shorten the experiment loop. Changes to the simulation, control model, tools, and diagnostics can be made together, focused experiments can run quickly, and their results can be inspected immediately.

A harness and API expose that loop to AI agents: they can load states, change experiment conditions, run tests, inspect runtime readbacks, capture results, and return to named checkpoints. The project is therefore both a simulator and an agent-operated research environment.

Early browser experiments combined spring deformation with an additional directional force. The current system removes that layer: navigation has to arise from local decisions passed through the body and expressed through changes to its existing springs. This makes morphology and coordination part of the movement solution, rather than treating the lattice as a shape carried toward a target.

Earlier assisted controller

A direct target-oriented helper force was still active in this run. It is included as development history, not as evidence for the current spring-only controller. Recorded 8 June 2026.

My contribution

Work

WebGPU simulation

Particle-and-spring physics, a simplified directional medium response, interaction tools, and the browser runtime used for experiments.

Local control

Node-local state, sensing, spring-linked communication, action traces, and the composition of changes across the body.

Body authoring

A local editor for drawing nodes and links, applying symmetry, saving named morphologies, and stamping specimens into the live simulation.

Agent-operated experiment harness

An API for loading states, changing conditions, running focused tests, inspecting runtime readbacks, capturing results, and returning to named checkpoints.

From authoring to behavior

An initial morphology is edited, stamped, and observed in the live simulation. A second iteration then repeats the authoring-to-runtime loop with a different body. Recorded 30 August 2026.

Current state

Status

Different lattice morphologies can now produce successful target-directed movement. When a body encounters a passage it cannot cross directly, trial and error can lead it to movement and deformation patterns that solve the obstruction.

The next focus is coordinated, task-specific movement within a single lattice: selected particles will take on movement roles and work together so designated parts of the body can reach their assigned targets.

Cotex / Kalbim Duracak