Capturing the frugal beauty of complex natural tessellations

Surface tessellations are an arrangement of shapes which are tightly fitted, and form repeat patterns on a surface without overlapping. Imagine the pattern of a giraffe’s fur, the shell of a tortoise and the honeycomb of bees—all form natural tessellations. Mimicking these natural designs computationally is a complex, multi-disciplinary problem. A global team of computer scientists has developed a new, alternate model for replicating these intricate surface designs, veering away from classical, multi-step approaches to a more efficient, streamlined algorithm.