# Visualizing the Structure of Lenia Parameter Space

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.01932 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01932/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 10 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Lenia - Biology of Artificial Life](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05433/) (2018)
- [Flow-Lenia: Towards open-ended evolution in cellular automata through mass conservation and parameter localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07906/) (2022)
- [Looking for Complexity at Phase Boundaries in Continuous Cellular Automata](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17848/) (2024)
- [MaCE: General Mass Conserving Dynamics for Cellular Automata](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12306/) (2025)
- [The Glider Equation for Asymptotic Lenia](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04167/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [The Artificial Experimentalist: Discovery and Control of Self-Organizing Phenomena with Autotelic Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.26116/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Continuous cellular automata are rocketing in popularity, yet developing a theoretical understanding of their behaviour remains a challenge. In the case of Lenia, a few fundamental open problems include determining what exactly constitutes a soliton, what is the overall structure of the parameter space, and where do the solitons occur in it. In this abstract, we present a new method to automatically classify Lenia systems into four qualitatively different dynamical classes. This allows us to detect moving solitons, and to provide an interactive visualization of Lenia's parameter space structure on our website https://lenia-explorer.vercel.app/. The results shed new light on the above-mentioned questions and lead to several observations: the existence of new soliton families for parameters where they were not believed to exist, or the universality of the phase space structure across various kernels.