A classic contribution to automata studies from the acclaimed Annals of Mathematics Studies series Princeton University Press is proud to have published the Annals of Mathematics Studies since 1940. One of the oldest and most respected series in science publishing, it has included many of the most important and influential mathematical works of the twentieth century. The series continues this tradition as Princeton University Press publishes the major works of the twenty-first century. To mark the continued success of the series, all books are available in paperback and as ebooks.

This book collects recent theoretical advances and concrete applications of learning automata (LAs) in various areas of computer science, presenting a broad treatment of the computer science field in a survey style. Learning automata (LAs) have proven to be effective decision-making agents, especially within unknown stochastic environments. The book starts with a brief explanation of LAs and their baseline variations. It subsequently introduces readers to a number of recently developed, complex structures used to supplement LAs, and describes their steady-state behaviors. These complex structures have been developed because, by design, LAs are simple units used to perform simple tasks; their full potential can only be tapped when several interconnected LAs cooperate to produce a group synergy. In turn, the next part of the book highlights a range of LA-based applications in diverse computer science domains, from wireless sensor networks, to peer-to-peer networks, to complex social networks, and finally to Petri nets. The book accompanies the reader on a comprehensive journey, starting from basic concepts, continuing to recent theoretical findings, and ending in the applications of LAs in problems from numerous research domains. As such, the book offers a valuable resource for all computer engineers, scientists, and students, especially those whose work involves the reinforcement learning and artificial intelligence domains.

The description for this book, Automata Studies. (AM-34), Volume 34, will be forthcoming.

The thirty four contributions in this book cover many aspects of contemporary studies on cellular automata and include reviews, research reports, and guides to recent literature and available software. Cellular automata, dynamic systems in which space and time are discrete, are yielding interesting applications in both the physical and natural sciences. The thirty four contributions in this book cover many aspects of contemporary studies on cellular automata and include reviews, research reports, and guides to recent literature and available software. Chapters cover mathematical analysis, the structure of the space of cellular automata, learning rules with specified properties: cellular automata in biology, physics, chemistry, and computation theory; and generalizations of cellular automata in neural nets, Boolean nets, and coupled map lattices.Current work on cellular automata may be viewed as revolving around two central and closely related problems: the forward problem and the inverse problem. The forward problem concerns the description of properties of given cellular automata. Properties considered include reversibility, invariants, criticality, fractal dimension, and computational power. The role of cellular automata in computation theory is seen as a particularly exciting venue for exploring parallel computers as theoretical and practical tools in mathematical physics. The inverse problem, an area of study gaining prominence particularly in the natural sciences, involves designing rules that possess specified properties or perform specified task. A long-term goal is to develop a set of techniques that can find a rule or set of rules that can reproduce quantitative observations of a physical system. Studies of the inverse problem take up the organization and structure of the set of automata, in particular the parameterization of the space of cellular automata. Optimization and learning techniques, like the genetic algorithm and adaptive stochastic cellular automata are applied to find cellular automaton rules that model such physical phenomena as crystal growth or perform such adaptive-learning tasks as balancing an inverted pole.Howard Gutowitz is Collaborateur in the Service de Physique du Solide et Résonance Magnetique, Commissariat a I'Energie Atomique, Saclay, France.