http://programmer.ie/tags/pathfinding/ Recent content in Pathfinding on Programmer.ie: Modern AI programming Hugo en-us Mon, 10 Aug 2026 20:37:00 +0100 http://programmer.ie/post/cellular-automata-from-first-principles-44/ Mon, 10 Aug 2026 20:37:00 +0100 http://programmer.ie/post/cellular-automata-from-first-principles-44/ <h1 id="cellular-automata-from-first-principles-44-neural-cellular-automata-for-pathfinding">Cellular Automata From First Principles 44: Neural Cellular Automata for Pathfinding</h1> <p>Until now our neural cellular automata have learned to <strong>make and maintain shapes</strong>.</p> <p>Now we will ask them to compute something.</p> <p>Given:</p> <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" style="color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4;"><code class="language-text" data-lang="text"><span style="display:flex;"><span>walls </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>start </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>finish </span></span></code></pre></div><p>can a shared local update rule discover a path?</p> <p>This is an unusually good task for an NCA because classical pathfinding already has a local interpretation.</p> <p>Breadth-first search expands a frontier:</p> <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" style="color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4;"><code class="language-text" data-lang="text"><span style="display:flex;"><span>start </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span> ↓ </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>nearby reachable cells </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span> ↓ </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>next layer of reachable cells </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span> ↓ </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>... </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span> ↓ </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>goal </span></span></code></pre></div><p>That looks remarkably like information propagating through a cellular system.</p>