What is this called? (Math/Algorithm Question?)

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been lurking at SDMB for a few weeks, and now I have a question.

Quite a while back when I was learning how to program, I started playing around with simple graphics manipulations in an old version of Pascal. I ‘discovered’ an interesting algorithm that I have not ever been able to find referenced on the internet or elsewhere. Does it have a name? Any practical applications? I am not a mathematician or even a computer scientist, so i apologize in advance for any naivety herein.

Here it is:

  1. Start with a number of ‘objects’ (3-12 seems best) and place them randomly on a large 2-D grid (say 500x500). These objects are defined as a 1-D array.
  2. Apply a turn-based algorithm where:
    a) object 1 moves along the x and/or y-axes towards object 2, O2->O3, O3->O4…and finally On->O1.
    b) object 1 moves along the x and/or y-axes AWAY from object n, O2 away from O1, O3 away from O2, etc.
  3. The net movement of each object is determined by its position relative to its neighbors in the array that defines it. (More elaborate algorithms are imaginable in this same vein).
  4. All objects are moved to their new position, and repeat (2).

The result of many iterations of this algorithm leads to some interesting behaviors of objects (often dependent on the relative positionings of each at the start) and the traces of each object are sometimes quite strange but tend to describe patterns.

ataraxy22

2

This is a cellular automaton, although it’s probably not what most people would think of when you say the term.