Membrane Systems with External Control

Abstract. We consider the idea of controlling the evolution of a membrane system. In particular, we investigate a model of membrane systems using promoted rules, where a string of promoters (called the control string) “travels ” through the regions, activating the rules of the system. This control string is present in the skin region at the beginning of the computation – one can interpret that it has been inserted in the system before starting the computation – and it is “consumed”, symbol by symbol, while traveling through the system. In this way, the inserted string drives the computation of the membrane system by controlling the activation of evolution rules. When the control string is entirely consumed and no rule can be applied anymore, then the system halts – this corresponds to a successful computation. The number of objects present in the output region is the result of such a computation. In this way, using a set of control strings (a control program), one generates a set of numbers. We also consider a more restrictive definition of a successful computation, and then study the corresponding model. In this paper we investigate the influence of the structure of control programs on the generative power. We demonstrate that different structures yield generative powers ranging from finite to recursively enumerable number sets. In determining the way that the control string moves through the regions, we consider two possible “strategies of traveling”, and prove that they are similar as far as the generative power is concerned.