"Extending a Dynamic Graphical Turing Machine"

Supervised by R.Gaizauskas

Abstract

In 1936, Alan M. Turing published the first study of an abstract machine model for computation, and proposed the class of automata that is now known as the Turing Machine. This work went on to become the foundation from which the first computers were built.

In 2000, Chris Howard created an application called Turing 2000 [HOW00], as part of his 3 rd year undergraduate project. This package was designed to benefit students, allowing them to create standard transition diagrams and composite diagrams; also including auto-encoding facilities for universal Turing machines, and multiple tapes.

An application has been created called AMSoft, which is an extension of Turing 2000 and adds facilities for Finite Automata, making it possible to create, edit and simulate transition diagram representations of finite automata. It also looked and tried to provide facilities for pushdown automata, though this was unsuccessful.

It is hoped that this work will be carried on in future projects, and eventually become part of an application that covers all aspects of automata theory taught on the COM 234: Theory of Machines and Languages course, The University of Sheffield [GAI98].