Cellular Automata

Create cellular automata from 'Wolfram' rules. Allows the creation of 'Wolfram' style plots, as well as of animations. Easy to create multiple plots, for example the output of a rule with different initial states, or the output of many different rules from the same state. The output of a cellular automaton is given as a matrix, making it easy to try to explore the possibility of predicting its time evolution using various statistical tools available in R. Wolfram S. (2002, ISBN:1579550088) "A New Kind of Science".

An R package for creating cellular automata.

library(cellularautomata)

Create the plot of a cellular automaton

You can generate a cellular automaton using the ca function, specifying the Wolfram rule. For example:

ca(18) |> plot()
ca(30) |> plot()
ca(45) |> plot()
ca(195) |> plot()

Animations

You can get an animation of a cellular automaton using plot(animate = TRUE):

ca(30, ncols = 20, steps = 30) |> plot(animate = TRUE)

Polar coordinates

By default the line is wrapped, meaning it is actually a circle, with the end connected to the beginning.

You can plot it using polar coordinates:

ca(193, steps = 50) |> plot(time_flow = "up", circle = TRUE)

This also works for animations:

ca(193, ncols = 25, steps = 100) |> plot(circle = TRUE, animate = TRUE)

Acknowledgements

Original function created by Nicola Procopio.