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Complexity of Langton's Ant

Anahi Gajardo·Andres Moreira·Eric Goles
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Abstract

The virtual ant introduced by C. Langton has an interesting behavior, which has been studied in several contexts. Here we give a construction to calculate any boolean circuit with the trajectory of a single ant. This proves the P-hardness of the system and implies, through the simulation of one dimensional cellular automata and Turing machines, the universality of the ant and the undecidability of some problems associated to it.

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Anahi Gajardo, Andres Moreira, Eric Goles. 2003-06-13. Complexity of Langton's Ant. https://arxiv.org/abs/nlin/0306022

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