Cellular Automata DEVS: A Modeling, Simulation, and Visualization Environment

Abstract

Cellular Automata (CA) models are represented as a collection of independent dynamical cells having some specific spatial relationship to each other. These tessellation automata can have simple to complex behaviors due to both individual cell behaviors as well as their interactions. Code debugging, supported by advanced software development tools, is needed for developing CAs owing their complex dynamics to cells that have non-trivial event handling and timing. As such, it is useful to debug models during simulation through step-by-step examination of any number of cells using rich control and visualization means. In this paper, we show the CA-DEVS framework where cell and Cellular Automata models are derived from atomic and coupled Parallel DEVS models. This framework uniquely supports visualizations using run-time generation of input, output, and state linear and superdense time trajectories as well as run-time spatial animation with playback. Multimodal visualization capabilities allow examining behavior of any number of cells independent of any other cell. We describe some key parts of the architectural design of the CA-DEVS and highlight some ongoing and future research.