4 Dynamics of Generalized Automata Networks

Summary form only. Automata networks are well known and have been widely used in many fields or research. However, the networks have nearly always been of the regular lattice type, such as rings and two-dimensional grids, or based on random graphs, such as boolean networks. With the growing awareness that many networks in nature, society, and technology are not of these two basic types, it becomes of interest to try to understand the genesis and the dynamical properties of more general networks of automata. In this talk I shall attempt to describe the topological structure of these graphs, and I will discuss some of their dynamical properties, including their robustness in the presence of noise, showing that the topology has a marked influence on those properties and sets them apart from the standard types. Examples will come from boolean network theory and from cellular automata that perform global computations.