study of abstract machines and automata
The automaton described by this state diagram starts in state S1, and changes states following the arrows marked 0 or 1 according to the input symbols as they arrive. The double circle marks S1 as an accepting state. Since all paths from S1 to itself contain an even number of arrows marked 0, this automaton accepts strings containing even numbers of 0s.
Automata theory is the study of abstract machines and automata, as well as the computational problems that can be solved using them. It is a theory in theoretical computer science with close connections to cognitive science and mathematical logic. The word automata comes from the Greek word αὐτόματος, which means "self-acting, self-willed, self-moving". An automaton (automata in plural) is an abstract self-propelled computing device which follows a predetermined sequence of operations automatically. An automaton with a finite number of states is called a finite automaton (FA) or finite-state machine (FSM). The figure on the right illustrates a finite-state machine, which is a well-known type of automaton. This automaton consists of states (represented in the figure by circles) and transitions (represented by arrows). As the automaton sees a symbol of input, it makes a transition (or jump) to another state, according to its transition function, which takes the previous state and current input symbol as its arguments.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).