Automata theory is an extremely interesting and cool branch of theorethical CS (and closely related to cognitive science and mathematical logic) that studies the idea of an automaton, and what can and can’t be done with an automaton. The word automata loosely means “a self-acting machine”. It comes from the Greek word (Greek script incoming, might look like giberish without fonts) αὐτόματος , which means “self-acting, self-willed, selfg”. The singular form of the word automata is automaton, by the way.

Here I will do my best to provide a mostly complete, workable, and easy primer kind of guide to Automata theory. After you finish reading this, then, if you want to learn more, I recommend you research more on the topic yourself ^_^.

Definition

An automaton is an abstract and self-propelled machine (in a more practical context, this is often a function, you could also call it a computing device) following a predefined set of instructions or operations.