Neural Particle Automata: Learning Self-Organizing Particle Dynamics

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Kim, Hyunsoo, Pajouheshgar, Ehsan, Süsstrunk, Sabine, Jakob, Wenzel, Park, Jinah
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Kim, Hyunsoo
Pajouheshgar, Ehsan
Süsstrunk, Sabine
Jakob, Wenzel
Park, Jinah
author_facet Kim, Hyunsoo
Pajouheshgar, Ehsan
Süsstrunk, Sabine
Jakob, Wenzel
Park, Jinah
contents We introduce Neural Particle Automata (NPA), a Lagrangian generalization of Neural Cellular Automata (NCA) from static lattices to dynamic particle systems. Unlike classical Eulerian NCA where cells are pinned to pixels or voxels, NPA model each cell as a particle with a continuous position and internal state, both updated by a shared, learnable neural rule. This particle-based formulation yields clear individuation of cells, allows heterogeneous dynamics, and concentrates computation only on regions where activity is present. At the same time, particle systems pose challenges: neighborhoods are dynamic, and a naive implementation of local interactions scale quadratically with the number of particles. We address these challenges by replacing grid-based neighborhood perception with differentiable Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) operators backed by memory-efficient, CUDA-accelerated kernels, enabling scalable end-to-end training. Across tasks including morphogenesis, point-cloud classification, and particle-based texture synthesis, we show that NPA retain key NCA behaviors such as robustness and self-regeneration, while enabling new behaviors specific to particle systems. Together, these results position NPA as a compact neural model for learning self-organizing particle dynamics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_16096
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Neural Particle Automata: Learning Self-Organizing Particle Dynamics
Kim, Hyunsoo
Pajouheshgar, Ehsan
Süsstrunk, Sabine
Jakob, Wenzel
Park, Jinah
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
We introduce Neural Particle Automata (NPA), a Lagrangian generalization of Neural Cellular Automata (NCA) from static lattices to dynamic particle systems. Unlike classical Eulerian NCA where cells are pinned to pixels or voxels, NPA model each cell as a particle with a continuous position and internal state, both updated by a shared, learnable neural rule. This particle-based formulation yields clear individuation of cells, allows heterogeneous dynamics, and concentrates computation only on regions where activity is present. At the same time, particle systems pose challenges: neighborhoods are dynamic, and a naive implementation of local interactions scale quadratically with the number of particles. We address these challenges by replacing grid-based neighborhood perception with differentiable Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) operators backed by memory-efficient, CUDA-accelerated kernels, enabling scalable end-to-end training. Across tasks including morphogenesis, point-cloud classification, and particle-based texture synthesis, we show that NPA retain key NCA behaviors such as robustness and self-regeneration, while enabling new behaviors specific to particle systems. Together, these results position NPA as a compact neural model for learning self-organizing particle dynamics.
title Neural Particle Automata: Learning Self-Organizing Particle Dynamics
topic Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.16096