Cellular Automata

Book excerpt: Cellular automata make up a class of completely discrete dynamical systems, which have became a core subject in the sciences of complexity due to their conceptual simplicity, easiness of implementation for computer simulation, and their ability to exhibit a wide variety of amazingly complex behavior. The feature of simplicity behind complexity of cellular automata has attracted the researchers' attention from a wide range of divergent fields of study of science, which extend from the exact disciplines of mathematical physics up to the social ones, and beyond. Numerous complex systems containing many discrete elements with local interactions have been and are being conveniently modelled as cellular automata. In this book, the versatility of cellular automata as models for a wide diversity of complex systems is underlined through the study of a number of outstanding problems using these innovative techniques for modelling and simulation.