Inoue et al. introduced an automaton on a two-dimensional tape, which decides acceptance or rejection of an input tape by scanning the tape from various sides by various automata which move one way, and investigated the accepting power of such an automaton. This paper continues the investigation of this type of automata, especially, -type automata (obtained by combining four three-way two-dimensional deterministic finite automata (tr2-dfa's) in "or" fashion) and -type automata (obtained by combining four tr2-dfa's in "and" fashion). We first investigate a relationship between the accepting powers of -type automata and -type automata, and show that they are incomparable. Then, we investigate a hierarchy of the accepting powers based on the number of tr2-dfa's combined. Finally, we briefly describe a relationship between the accepting powers of automata obtained by combining three-way two-dimensional deterministic and nondeterministic finite automata.

The hierarchies of multihead finite automata over a one-letter alphabet are investigated. Let SeH(k) [NSeH(k) ] denote the class of languages over a one-letter alphabet accepted by deterministic [nondeterministic] sensing two-way k-head finite automata. Let H (k)s[NH(k)s] denote the class of sets of square tapes over a one-letter alphabet accepted by two-dimensional four-way deterministic [nondeterministic] k-head finite automata. Let SeH(k)s[NSeH(k)s] denote the class of sets of square tapes over a one-letter alphabet accepted by two-dimensional four-way sensing deterministic [nondeterministic] k-head finite automata. This paper shows that SeH(k) SeH(k1) and NSeH(k) NSeH(k1) hold for all k3. It is also shown that H(k)s[NH(k)s] H(k1)s[NH (k1)s] and SeH (k)s[NSeH(k)s] SeH(k1)s[NSeH(k1)s] hold for all k1.