GC: n

CT: ‘Attractors‘ are all-or-none states abstracted from dynamic trajectories. Each attractor can represent a symbol. A symbol is present when the phase-space trajectory belongs to the corresponding attractor. There are as many symbols as ‘attraction basins‘. No symbol is instantiated in a state characterized by a ‘chaotic attractor‘.

S: NAI – http://goo.gl/yRPx53 (last access: 30 December 2014)

N: 1. From Latin attrahere to draw towards, from trahere to pull.
2. In the fields of Computer Graphics and Mathematics: A geometrical object toward which the trajectory of a dynamical system represented by a curve in the phase space, converges in the course of time.
3. Predictable, or tame, attractors correspond to the behavior to which a system settles down or is “attracted”. A strange attractor is represented by an unpredictable trajectory where a minute difference in starting positions of two initially adjacent points leads to totally uncorrelated positions later in time or in the mathematical iteration.
4. Recursion relations are also used to construct fractal attractors characteristic of chaotic motion. As a simple example we briefly mention dynamic systems that period double on their way to chaos … However the set invariant with regard to (2.19) is a repeller (not an attractor). It can be shown that the attractor forms approximately a non-uniform Cantor set.

S: 1. http://www.memidex.com/attractor+feature (last access: 30 December 2014) (Collins Dictionary). 2, 3 & 4. TERMIUMPLUS.

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CR: artificial intelligence, automatic control engineering, computer science, robotics.