A Survey of Cellular Automata: Types, Dynamics, Non-uniformity and Applications

Cellular automata (CAs) are dynamic frameworks which exhibit complex global behavior from simple local interaction and computation. Since the inception of CA by von Neumann in 1950s, it has attracted the attention of several researchers over various backgrounds and fields for modeling different physical, natural as well as real-life phenomena. Classically, CAs are uniform. However, non-uniformity has also been introduced in update pattern, lattice structure, neighborhood dependency and local rule. In this survey, we tour to the various types of CAs introduced till date, the different characterization tools, the global behaviors of CAs, like universality, reversibility, dynamics etc. Special attention is given to non-uniformity in CAs and specially, the non-uniform elementary CAs, which have been very useful in solving several real-life problems.