Visualizing a Nondeterministic to Deterministic Finite-State Machine Transformation

The transformation of a nondeterministic finite-state automaton into a deterministic finite-state automaton is an integral part of any course on formal languages and automata theory. For some students, understanding this transformation is challenging. Common problems encountered include not comprehending how the states of the deterministic finite-state automaton are determined and not comprehending the role that all the edges of the nondeterministic finite-state automaton have in the deterministic finite-state automaton's construction. To aid students in understanding, transformation visualization tools have been developed. Although useful in helping students, these tools do not properly illustrate the relationship between the states of the deterministic finite-state automaton and the edges of the nondeterministic finite-state automaton. This article presents a novel interactive visualization tool to illustrate the transformation that highlights this relationship and that is integrated into the FSM programming language. In addition, the implementation of the visualization is sketched.