Tutorials/General technology
So now, after coming across a good cellular automata, you have decided to do something less abstract with it — something more significant than random soup searching and more engaging than automatic software searching. Then you begin to consider signal circuitry, the very connection between microscopic evolution and macroscopic construction. (Actually, that is approximately what cellular automata were originally created for; the basis of modelling self-replicating systems.)
What is a signal and what do they do?
A signal is a moving configuration different from its background, and thus carrying some information. In terms of cellular automata, the following patterns can serve as signals:
- Spaceships in an empty medium,
- Fuses, drifters and negative spaceships in some nonempty media, and
- Active reactions, particularly methuselahs, in conduits.
A signal travels through the space at a certain speed, which is an important measure since timing (especially synchronization) decides whether signal circuitry works or not.
Signals transform and interact in various ways. A lone signal can be created, reflected and/or flipped, delayed/advanced, multiplicated, transformed into other signal(s), or destroyed. Two or more signals react to annihilate or to perform logic operations. These rely on some devices, namely guns/factorys, reflectors, advancer, pulse dividers, duplicators, converters, eaters, Boolean logic gates, etc.
How to find these building blocks?
Constructing signal circuitry involves both human idea and computer power. Here some simple demonstration may provide hints on how to develop signal circuitry.
Example 1: Conway's Game of Life, with the Gosper glider gun
The signal: glider
Imagine travelling back to the early life days in the 1970s. When tracking the evolution of small polyomino patterns, Life enthusiasts observed a moving configuration as follows:
Soon the spaceship became known as the glider, and found its part in the signal circuitry. Before constructing anything let's analyze its movement.
A glider travels one cell down and one cell right in four ticks. ...
The signal sink: eater 1
The signal source: Gosper glider gun
Since the discovery of glider, people have been seeking for patterns that generates gliders. Later, it was found that a sustainable collision between two queen bees could yield gliders again and again.
Signal reflectors
Example 2:
Add your suggestion here (best with other kind of systems)!