Analysis of cellular automata governed by simple time-variant rules

Abstract

This paper studies cellular automata governed by time-variant rules. The time-variant rule is constructed by switching two simple rules. Depending on the rule and initial conditions, the cellular automata can exhibit various spatiotemporal patterns. In order to investigate the dynamics, we present two simple feature quantities. The first quantity characterizes the expression ability of various spatiotemporal patterns. The second quantity characterizes the error correction ability of target spatiotemporal patterns. Performing numerical experiments, we have found three typical classes of the cellular automata. First, the expression ability is the highest and error correction ability is strong. Second, the error correction ability is very strong whereas the expression ability is very weak. Third, the expression ability is very high whereas the error correction ability is very weak.