Abstract: Artificial life is a simulated or modeling system generated or constructed by using computer and precise mechanism, which behaves like a natural life system. The emergent behavior of a natural life system is manufested by the basic behaviors such as self--organizing, self-repairing and self-reproduction, and the chaos dynamics, environment adaptation and evolution which form these behaviors. This paper introduces the reason, developing procedure, and modeling of artificial life, and then discusses the methods and basic theories and the perspective of the research of artificial life.