This Demonstration lets readers of A New Kind of Science explore two-color mobile automata with neighbors, as given in the examples on pp. 73–75. The evolution, rule icons, and compressed evolution are shown.
Two-color mobile automata with neighbors take the nearest neighbors of the active cell into account when determining the rules of evolution, as well as outputting a left or right cell movement, the new color of the active cell, and the new colors of the nearest neighbors on the next step.
There are possible rules for this system. To allow all possibilities, we use two sliders, each ranging from 0 to 164-1. The rule number overall is calculated as (rule high part) * 164 + (rule low part).