Cellular automata are a class of spatially and temporally discrete mathematical systems characterized by local interaction and synchronous dynamical evolution. Introduced by the mathematician John von Neumann in the 1950s as simple models of biological self-reproduction, they are prototypical models for complex systems and processes consisting of a large number of simple, homogeneous, locally interacting components. Cellular automata have been the focus of great attention over the years because of their ability to generate a rich spectrum of very complex patterns of behavior out of sets of relatively simple underlying rules. Moreover, they appear to capture many essential features of complex self-organizing cooperative behavior observed in real systems.This book provides a summary of the basic properties of cellular automata, and explores in depth many important cellular-automata-related research areas, including artificial life, chaos, emergence, fractals, nonlinear dynamics, and self-organization. It also presents a broad review of the speculative proposition that cellular automata may eventually prove to be theoretical harbingers of a fundamentally new information-based, discrete physics. Designed to be accessible at the junior/senior undergraduate level and above, the book will be of interest to all students, researchers, and professionals wanting to learn about order, chaos, and the emergence of complexity. It contains an extensive bibliography and provides a listing of cellular automata resources available on the World Wide Web.

Cellular automata are a class of spatially and temporally discrete mathematical systems characterized by local interaction and synchronous dynamical evolution. Introduced by the mathematician John von Neumann in the 1950s as simple models of biological self-reproduction, they are prototypical models for complex systems and processes consisting of a large number of simple, homogeneous, locally interacting components. Cellular automata have been the focus of great attention over the years because of their ability to generate a rich spectrum of very complex patterns of behavior out of sets of relatively simple underlying rules. Moreover, they appear to capture many essential features of complex self-organizing cooperative behavior observed in real systems.This book provides a summary of the basic properties of cellular automata, and explores in depth many important cellular-automata-related research areas, including artificial life, chaos, emergence, fractals, nonlinear dynamics, and self-organization. It also presents a broad review of the speculative proposition that cellular automata may eventually prove to be theoretical harbingers of a fundamentally new information-based, discrete physics. Designed to be accessible at the junior/senior undergraduate level and above, the book will be of interest to all students, researchers, and professionals wanting to learn about order, chaos, and the emergence of complexity. It contains an extensive bibliography and provides a listing of cellular automata resources available on the World Wide Web.

Discrete-Time and Discrete-Space Dynamical Systems provides a systematic characterization of the similarities and differences of several types of discrete-time and discrete-space dynamical systems, including: Boolean control networks; nondeterministic finite-transition systems; finite automata; labelled Petri nets; and cellular automata. The book's perspective is primarily based on topological properties though it also employs semitensor-product and graph-theoretic methods where appropriate. It presents a series of fundamental results: invertibility, observability, detectability, reversiblity, etc., with applications to systems biology. Academic researchers with backgrounds in applied mathematics, engineering or computer science and practising engineers working with discrete-time and discrete-space systems will find this book a helpful source of new understanding for this increasingly important class of systems. The basic results to be found within are of fundamental importance for further study of related problems such as automated synthesis and safety control in cyber-physical systems using formal methods.

This volume constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 23rd IFIP WG 1.5 International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems, AUTOMATA 2017, held in Milan, Italy, in June 2017. The 14 full papers presented together with one full-length invited paper and 2 invited talk abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 28 submissions. The papers feature research on correlated models of automata. The topics include aspects and features of such models: dynamics; topological, ergodic, and algebraic aspects; algorithmic and complexity issues; emergent properties; formal languages; symbolic dynamics; tilings; models of parallelism and distributed systems; timing schemes; synchronous versus asynchronous models; phenomenological descriptions; scientific modelling; practical applications.

This volume constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 21st International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems, AUTOMATA 2015, held in Turku, Finland, in June 2015. This volume contains 4 invited talks in full-paper length and 15 regular papers, which were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 33 submissions. Topics of interest include, the following aspects and features of such systems: dynamical, topological, ergodic and algebraic aspects; algorithmic and complexity issues; emergent properties; formal language processing aspects; symbolic dynamics; models of parallelism and distributed systems; timing schemes; phenomenological descriptions; scientific modeling; and practical applications.

This volume constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 22nd IFIP WG 1.5International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete ComplexSystems, AUTOMATA 2016, held in Zurich, Switzerland, in June 2016. This volume contains 3 invited talks in full-paper length and 12 regularpapers, which were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 23submissions. The papers feature research on all fundamental aspects of cellular automata and related discrete complex systems and deal with the following topics: dynamical, topological, ergodic and algebraic aspects; algorithmic and complexity issues; emergent properties; formal language processing; symbolic dynamics; models of parallelism and distributed systems; timing schemes; phenomenological descriptions; scientific modeling; and practical applications.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 25th IFIP WG 1.5 International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems, AUTOMATA 2019, held in Guadalajara, Mexico, in June 2019.The 7 regular papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 10 submissions. The topics of the conference include deal with dynamical, topological, ergodic and algebraic aspects of CA and DCS, algorithmic and complexity issues, emergent properties, formal languages, symbolic dynamics, tilings, models of parallelism and distributed systems, timing schemes, synchronous versus asynchronous models, phenomenological descriptions, scientic modeling, and practical applications.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Cellular Automata for Research and Industry, ACRI 2016, held in Fez, Morocco, in September 2014. The 45 full papers and 4 invited talks presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions. This volume contains invited contributions and accepted papers from the main track and from the three organized workshops. The first part is organized according to three topics: (1) Cellular Automata Theory and Implementation (2) Cellular Automata Dynamics and Synchronization, (3) Asynchronous Cellular Automata and Asynchronous Discrete Models - ACA. The second part of the volume contains three topics: (4) Modelling and Sim-ulation with Cellular Automata (5) Crowds, Traffic and Cellular Automata –CT&CA (6) Agent-Based Simulation and Cellular Automata – ABS&CA.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Cellular Automata for Research and Industry, ACRI 2020, which took place in Lodz, Poland, during December 2-4, 2020. The 24 full and 3 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 40 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: theory and cryptography, modeling and simulation, and disease spreading dynamics.