Cellular Automata: Research Towards Industry

Book excerpt: Cellular Automata (CA), about to enter their fifties, are coming of age, seen by the breadth and quality of CA-related research carried out worldwide, as well as by the appearance of interesting applications to real world problems. The papers collected in this book, presented at ACRI 98 (Third Conference on Cellular Automata for Research and Industry -7-9 October 1998), further demonstrate the vitality of this line ofresearch. Until some years ago, a researcher interested in dynamical modelling of spatially of the partial extended systems had only one language at his disposal, namely that differential equations (PDE). These are wonderful tools to use when an analytical solution can be found or a perturbative approach can provide a good approximation of the observed phenomena. The use of digital computers has enormously expanded the explanatory and predictive power of partial differential equations by allowing one to treat cases which had been outside the scope of a "pen and pencil" approach. However, it has also opened up a way to new formalisms which are able to describe interesting phenomena and are, at the same time, well-suited for digital simulation.