Optimal Behavior of a Moving Creature in the Cellular Automata Model

The goal of our investigation is to find automatically the best rule for a cell in the cellular automata model. The cells are either of type Obstacle, Empty or Creature. Only Creature can move around in the cell space and can perform one of the four actions: if the path to the next cell is blocked: turn left or right, if the path is free: move ahead and simultaneously turn left or right. The task of the creature is to cross all empty cells with a minimum number of steps. The behavior was modeled using a variable state machine represented by a state table. Input to the state table is the neighbor’s state in front of its moving direction. The goal is to find the absolutely best rule in the set of all possible rules. The search space grows exponentially with the number of states. As simulation, testing and evaluating the quality are very time consuming in software, the migration of the problem to a parallel hardware platform is a promising solution. In order to reduce the computation ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: PACT
• Authors: Mathias Halbach, Rolf Hoffmann
• Keywords: Distributed And Parallel Computing, Empty Cells, PACT 2005, State Table, Turn Left