The critical NCA got perfect score in the 5-bit memory task and can surpass the performance of the best elementary CA, rule 30, in the MNIST classification.

This work was done together with @stenichele.bsky.social and @mikkellepperod.bsky.social

This Neural Cellular Automaton (NCA) is a powered-up version of elementary Cellular Automata (CA), but it is controlled by an artificial neural network and with binary multi-channels. We evolve this NCA towards criticality and then evaluate it as a substrate for Reservoir Computing.

🚨Preprint alert 🚨
I am glad to announce that our preprint “Reservoir Computing with Evolved Critical Neural Cellular Automata” is out and will appear at ALIFE 2025 🎉

Link to our preprint: www.arxiv.org/abs/2508.02218

🔬 Excited to share our new paper: "Sensor Movement Drives Emergent Attention and Scalability in Active Neural Cellular Automata"

We found that when neural systems can move their sensors (like animals do!), they develop attention-like behaviors without being explicitly programmed to do so. Post 1/6