Jumping Finite Automata

The present paper proposes a new investigation area in automata theory: jumping finite automata. These automata work like classical finite automata except that they read input words discontinuously; that is, after reading a symbol, they can jump over some symbols within the words and continue their computation from there. The paper establishes several results concerning jumping finite automata in terms of commonly investigated areas of automata theory, such as decidability and closure properties. Most importantly, it achieves several results that demonstrate differences between jumping finite automata and classical finite automata. In its conclusion, the paper formulates several open problems and suggests future investigation areas.