A Simulation of Oblivious Multi-Head One-Way Finite Automata by Real-Time Cellular Automata

Abstract

In this paper, we present the simulation of a simple, yet significantly powerful, sequential model by cellular automata. The simulated model is called oblivious multi-head one-way finite automata and is characterized by having its heads moving only forward, on a trajectory that only depends on the length of the input. While the original finite automaton works in linear time, its corresponding cellular automaton performs the same task in real time, that is, exactly the length of the input. Although not truly a speed-up, the simulation may be interesting and reminds us of the open question about the equivalence of linear and real times on cellular automata.