title: A software tool for modeling and simulation of numerical P systems.
abstract: A P system represents a distributed and parallel bio-inspired computing model in which basic data structures are multi-sets or strings. Numerical P systems have been recently introduced and they use numerical variables and local programs (or evolution rules), usually in a deterministic way. They may find interesting applications in areas such as computational biology, process control or robotics. The first simulator of numerical P systems (SNUPS) has been designed, implemented and made available to the scientific community by the authors of this paper. SNUPS allows a wide range of applications, from modeling and simulation of ordinary differential equations, to the use of membrane systems as computational blocks of cognitive architectures, and as controllers for autonomous mobile robots. This paper describes the functioning of a numerical P system and presents an overview of SNUPS capabilities together with an illustrative example.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  SNUPS is freely available to researchers as a standalone application and may be downloaded from a dedicated website, http://snups.ics.pub.ro/, which includes an user manual and sample membrane structures.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Natural Computing and Robotics, Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania. cbuiu@ics.pub.ro
authors.forename: Catalin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Buiu
authors.forename: Octavian
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Arsene
authors.forename: Corina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cipu
authors.forename: Monica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Patrascu
mesh_terms: D001671:Biochemistry / Q000379:methods*; D002462:Cell Membrane / Q000378:metabolism*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D005057:Eukaryotic Cells / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism*; D008954:Models, Biological; D012371:Robotics; D012984:Software