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The set of states of automaton A, denoted states(A), need not be finite. This is a significant generalization of the usual notion of finite automata, as it enables modeling systems with unbounded data structures like counters and unbounded length queues. The set of start states (also known as initial states) is a non-empty subset of states.
Automata theory is closely related to formal language theory. In this context, automata are used as finite representations of formal languages that may be infinite. Automata are often classified by the class of formal languages they can recognize, as in the Chomsky hierarchy, which describes a nesting relationship between major classes of automata.
State diagrams can be used to graphically represent finite-state machines (also called finite automata). This was introduced by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver in their 1949 book The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Another source is Taylor Booth in his 1967 book Sequential Machines and Automata Theory.
Further, clocks can be reset. Timed automata are a sub-class of a type hybrid automata. Timed automata can be used to model and analyse the timing behavior of computer systems, e.g., real-time systems or networks. Methods for checking both safety and liveness properties have been developed and intensively studied over the last 20 years.
Formally, a deterministic finite automaton A may be defined by the tuple (Q, Σ, δ, q 0, F), where Q is the set of states of the automaton, Σ is the set of input symbols, δ is the transition function that takes a state q and an input symbol x to a new state δ(q,x), q 0 is the initial state of the automaton, and F is the set of accepting ...
In the automata formulation, the Krohn–Rhodes theorem for finite automata states that given a finite automaton A with states Q and input set I, output alphabet U, then one can expand the states to Q' such that the new automaton A' embeds into a cascade of "simple", irreducible automata: In particular, A is emulated by a feed-forward cascade ...
In automata theory, an unambiguous finite automaton (UFA) is a nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA) such that each word has at most one accepting path. Each deterministic finite automaton (DFA) is an UFA, but not vice versa. DFA, UFA, and NFA recognize exactly the same class of formal languages. On the one hand, an NFA can be exponentially ...
NFAs have been generalized in multiple ways, e.g., nondeterministic finite automata with ε-moves, finite-state transducers, pushdown automata, alternating automata, ω-automata, and probabilistic automata. Besides the DFAs, other known special cases of NFAs are unambiguous finite automata (UFA) and self-verifying finite automata (SVFA).