Universal enzymatic numerical P systems with small number of enzymatic rules

Abstract

Enzymatic Numerical P Systems (ENPSs) are a model of membrane computing that is well-suited for the simulation of physical processes and that has been used for the design and the implementation of motion controllers for wheeled robots and flying drones. The ENPSs model has been proven to be Turing universal and the theoretical effort was focused on minimizing various descriptional complexity parameters. In this paper, we explore the minimum number of enzymatic rules needed to achieve universality in ENPSs, specifically focusing on the all-parallel derivation mode where all applicable rules are applied at the same time. We show that in the case of a linear restriction for production functions, the universality can be obtained using 21 enzymatic rules, substantially improving previously known results. If production functions are allowed to be polynomials of degree 2, we show that a single enzymatic rule is sufficient to achieve universality. To obtain these results, a new proof method is introduced based on the translation of ENPSs to systems of conditional recurrences.