Department of Mathematical Sciences

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Browsing Department of Mathematical Sciences by Author "Adams, Roxane"

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    Implementation of cell clustering in cellular automata
    (Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2011-03) Adams, Roxane; Van Zijl, L.; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Science. Dept. of Mathematical Sciences. Dept. of Computer Science.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Cellular Automata (CA) have become a popular vehicle to study complex dynamical behaviour of systems. CA can be used to model a wide variety of physical, biological, chemical and other systems. Such systems typically consist of subparts that change their state independently, based on the state of their immediate surroundings and some generally shared laws of change. When the CA approach was used to solve the LEGO construction problem, the best solution was found when using a variant of CA allowing for the clustering of cells. The LEGO construction problem concerns the optimal layout of a set of LEGO bricks. The advantages found for using the CA method with clustering in this case are the ease of implementation, the significantly smaller memory usage to previously implemented methods, and its trivial extension to construct multicoloured LEGO sculptures which were previously too complex to construct. In our research we propose to explore the definitions of clustering in CA and investigate the implementation and application of this method. We look at the ant sorting method described by Lumer and Faieta, and compare the implementation of this algorithm using regular CA as well as the clustering variation. The ant sorting model is a simple model, in which ants move randomly in space and pick up and deposit objects on the basis of local information.