VMCAI 2026
Mon 12 - Tue 13 January 2026 Rennes, France
co-located with POPL 2026
Tue 13 Jan 2026 14:00 - 14:30 at Horizons - Models 2 Chair(s): Anthony Widjaja Lin

Cellular automata (CA) are well-studied models of decentralized parallel computation, known for their ability to exhibit complex global behavior from simple local rules. While their dynamics have been widely explored through simulations, a formal treatment of CA as genuine language generators remains underdeveloped. We formalize CA-expressible languages as sets of finite words obtained by projecting the non-quiescent segments of configurations reachable by one-dimensional, deterministic, synchronous CA over bi-infinite grids. These languages are defined with respect to sets of initial configurations specified by a regular language as in regular model checking. To capture structured dynamics, we propose a glider-based generative semantics for CA. Inspired by the classical notion of gliders, we define a glider as a one-cell entity carrying a symbol in a certain velocity under well defined interaction semantics. We show that despite the regularity of the initial configurations and the locality of the transition rules, the resulting languages can exhibit non-regular and even non-context-free structure. This positions regular-initialized CA languages as a surprisingly rich computational model, with potential applications in the formal analysis of linearly ordered MAS.

Tue 13 Jan

Displayed time zone: Brussels, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris change

14:00 - 15:30
Models 2VMCAI 2026 at Horizons
Chair(s): Anthony Widjaja Lin TU Kaiserslautern; MPI-SWS
14:00
30m
Talk
Atomic Gliders and Cellular Automata as Language Generators
VMCAI 2026
Dana Fisman Ben-Gurion University, Noa Izsak CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Germany
14:30
30m
Talk
Reachability in multi-agent transfer systems
VMCAI 2026
Nathalie Bertrand INRIA Rennes, Loic Helouet INRIA, Engel Lefaucheux Université de Lorraine; CNRS; Inria; LORIA, Luca Paparazzo Inria, IRISA, Université de Rennes
15:00
30m
Talk
A Hybrid Meta-Learning Framework for Adaptive Safe Controller Synthesis of Dynamical Models
VMCAI 2026
Rui Guo Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Yang Li Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Xiuqing Cao Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Wang Lin