transducer

1. A device for converting sound, temperature, pressure, light or other signals to or from an electronic signal.

2. Finite State Machine.

This term is used particularly in language theory where automata are often considered as abstract machines capable of recognising the language defined by a regular expression.

[M. Crochemore "tranducters and repetitions", Theoritical. Comp. Sc. 46 (1986)].

(15 Feb 1995)