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What is a Cellular Automata

Here some references:

• Wolfram - Cellular Automaton
• The nature of Code by Daniel Shiffman
• Chapter 3 of my master thesis (in italian)

TLDR;

A basic Cellular Automata is the quadruple <Z^d,S,X, α>

Z^d is a set of cells, a d-dimension matrix of cells

S is a set of status where the single cell can be in

X is a set of cell’s neighbors (the most common neighborhood implementation are MOORE and VON NEUMANN

α is the transition function. This function implements the evolution of the natural or artificial phenomena represented by a Cellular Automata.

Thanks to this mathematic model, it’s possible represent a lot of natural phenomena like landslides, lava flows and so on…

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What about JCAL idea

In the past, during my master thesis’s work, I contribuited to implement a library for Cellular Automata, mainly used by Physicists, Geologists and Scientists from different departments. This library was written in C++ and obviously was more complete than JCAL.

JCAL wants to implements the same idea but in a smaller and simpler way for Java user and developers.