Cellular Automata - Falmouth-Games-Academy/comp250-wiki GitHub Wiki
Introduction
The simplest systems,
While each alone are static,
Together they teach...
A Cellular Automaton is an agent-based model characterised by its environment, which is constituted by grids of cells, which communicate with each other creating a quasi-homogenous pattern.
| Bill Gosper's Glider Gun |
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| Gosper's Glider gun is one of the most famous representations of Cellular Automata which can be found in the "Game of Life" |
Overview
There are 3 basic principles to Cellular Automata.
The first principle of a cellular Automaton Model it is it's Spacial Structure. The spacial grid is where all the cells lies, which might be represented as a checkerboard.
| Cell grid, also known as "Cellular Wolrd" |
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| There are many neighbourhood patterns for CA, but the more famous ones are the Von Neumann and the Moore models |
The second principle of cellular automaton model is the local interaction.
The neighbouring composition defines the behaviour in which the states are going to change in regards to the cell. The larger the influence of a single cell the wider the change of pattern generated.
The way you can model the pattern is to through the third principle, The "Cell Change State" principle
- This cell owns a finite number of states, which can be data such as On and *Off.
- The agents can change their state in the base of the neighbouring states.
The states might be affected by 2 main dynamics:
1: Influence Dynamics
In influence dynamic, the agent never changes its position, but it can change its state following the state of the surrounding neighbours (We can see this represented in Bill Gosper Exploder Model).
2: Migration Dynamics
In Migration Dynamics, the agent might change its position following the position of its neighbours (We can see this happening in Bill Gosper Glider's model).
All of this is controlled by a Mathematical Algorithm hardcoded by the creator. Such Mathematical Algorithm can be represented as:
The formula describes the relationship between the singular cell state over time in function of its neighbouring cells.
Notorious examples:
Wolfram Elemental CA: https://reference.wolfram.com/language/tutorial/CellularAutomata.html
The Game of Life Ca: https://bitstorm.org/gameoflife/
References
[1] En.wikipedia.org. (2019). Cellular automaton. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton [Accessed 15 Feb. 2019].
[2] Flache, p. (2015). What is cellular automata modeling?. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyrwOf239M4 [Accessed 15 Feb. 2019].