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Fruit Flies Making Inroads on Autonomous Computing
Jucius Maximus writes "The configuration of base stations in cell phone networks has always been problematic because you can never predict how many phones will connect to which base station. And sometimes adjacent antennas will use the same frequency leading to dropped calls. Such configuration challenges may have solutions in autonomous computing. An article on C|NET describes how British Telecom is examining the development of fruit flies, hoping that nature has already found the solution to this problem. This technology could also be applied to 'threat-sensing' on computer networks."
come up with the noise the phone makes when it rings. :)
Video Game cheats, hints a
Dead Fruit == Beowoulf cluster
*Ducks
The solution is to just train fruit flies (instead of carrier pigeon) to carry the messages. Forget the radiation causing cell phones and switches, use Drosophila, nature has the solution.
Only things is...your message recepient must be in the same room with you...and have a banana in his pocket.
'British Telecom is examining the development of fruit flies, hoping that nature has already found the solution to this problem.'
AT&T has also joined the fray, though it has chosen the hippopotamus as it's bringer of change, and Verizon is leaning toward the studying Brazilians due to their high amounts of energy.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
This is another interresting idea on making systems that can self-adapt and grow/repair without intervention from engineers.
This is fine but if we take the 'nature' analogy that this science is following what happens when disease or illness strikes? For example a computer virus or trojan.
We will be dependent on crucial systems that, at some stage in the future, we will not understand how they work or how to repair them quickly.
This maybe acceptable for cell phone networks but what would happen if this was an air traffic control system?
I'm all for following the route in the Cnet article but we need to ensure that we build in processes to control and understand the changes that the system is implementing.
if this is threat-sensing technology, then i want an Africanized Bee-owulf...oh, forget it...
This article should really win the Captain Obvious award. I mean, really, it's not too hard to come up with the idea of "tell your neighbors which frequencies you're using". I could have saved them a bunch of money if they had asked me instead of some dumb flies! Yeesh.
This... would seem somewhat obvions to anyone who's had to deal with overlapping systems sharing a rather small resource, I'd think. As soon as I read the description of the problem, my first reaction was, "build an auto-negotiating, ad-hoc type system that'd figure it out for itself". As an example, don't networks of SMB clients (with no servers present) already hold "elections" to see who should be the Browse Master?
On the other hand, the article wasn't to clear on whether BT was using the general idea from the fruit fly, or was using some algorythm derived directly from those cells.
Let's just hope they don't try and patent it.
They were a bit vague on what goes on in the fly, so here's a short synopsis:
The entire back of the fly has the potential to become either a sensory organ or cuticle (the fly's skin). Things get narrowed down by the expression of some sensory-promoting proteins in clusters of cells at specific locations. The process they're intrigued by is how a single cell within this cluster becomes sensory.
All of these cells begin expressing a signal and a receptor for that signal. When the signal is received, a cell will turn down the expression of both the signal and the sensory promoting genes. Cells that aren't receiving the signal will turn down the expression of the receptor and turn up the expression of the signal. Thus, when a cell isn't seeing a lot of signal, it both reduces its ability to see any more, and increases its signaling to surrounding cells.
In the end, it all becomes a balancing act between signaling and seeing signaling from neighboring cells. The thought is that the initiation of the process is somewhat stochastic - some cells may turn on the signal earlier than others or start of expressing it at a higher level. The result of the signaling reinforcing itself is that this initial small advantage is greatly amplified, and becomes an all-or-nothing decision.
I hope that is more coherent than i think it is...
JT
______ This mind intentionally left blank.
There seems to be a trend here.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Time flies like an arrow.
Since frequency is the inverse of time, the solution is obviously with fruit flies!
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If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
http://www.conceptlab.com/fly/
And yes, there is a video (2.2meg QT) and extended wiring diagrams
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Is it because some egghead "thought up" a great idea that been around for a while? Or is it that mega company need some stupid press?
Self adjusting / Self modifing routines have been around "forever". The Fuzzy logic used in some Japnesse clothes washer and air-condioning systems show the way.
The techinology for the computerized camera positioning of Star Wars 4 (was 1)- The New Hope, had self correcting routines built in.
So some telecom just thought this up!
Some news.
There is nothing new about modeling cellular automata in CS but the natural world could have a lot to contribute in this area. Finding the set of rules that produce a particular equilibrium system can be as much art as it is science. Instead we could look to nature for a pattern that represents our desired outcome. Then look at the rules in the natural system to see how the equilibrium is reached.
The system would still be fully predictable because the rules can be modeled. If you want to know what will happen if you take a base station off-line just get status info from all the stations, load your model & see how it changes. Need to fix a problem, same solution.
Perhaps river channel migration can be applied to the problem of network bottlenecks.
Very cool stuff
The configuration of base stations in cell phone networks has always been problematic because you can never predict how many phones will connect to which base station.
True. However, it doesn't much matter most of the time. We monitor the usage of our sites, and expand those that require it. We also preemtivly expand those that are predicted to require it, and those that we know are going to cover major events, IE concerts, conventions, etc.
And sometimes adjacent antennas will use the same frequency leading to dropped calls.
If this is happening, your RF engineer is an idiot. The process of planning what sites use what frequencies is somewhat intensive, but putting the same frequency on two addjacent sites is a complete fsck up. More typical is a site overshooting and interfering with another one several miles away.
But with dozens of base stations, each broadcasting with six of the 29 available frequencies
I know that BT has alot more capacity problems than most places here in the US. However, my company uses 3 frequencies per site, from a list of 24. Each site also freqency hops on a list of 18 more freqencies. Hopping really makes all this possible.
That's great, but what they really need to do is to find a way to keep the fruit flies away from my monitor!
the whole point was to REMOVE bugs from the system...
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Aww, FSCK!
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
So this is like elevators using Fuzzy logic?. If you everyday work is in a building where the elevators uses Fuzzy Logic, you really notices when you move to a building where they don't. I would have thought that with the rate mobile masts are getting installed everywhere a technology that the article mentions, would already had be created? Now I have no knowledge about how these networks are controlled, but if there is no automated adjustments I can understand why there are so many "dead spots".
my sig
We all know that fruit flies multiply at an alarming rate. Now consider, in turn, that time flies like an arrow -- if said experiments go awry, it could be discovered that fruit flies like a BANANANANANANANA...
I actually think this is a good idea.
Except-make it server-side QoS instead of client-side, or maybe locked in the phone's firmware not easily accessible.
You pay for your QoS on top of the minutes. An "emergency" phone could have say 2K minutes but its calls would be dropped on overloaded circuits, so it would cost less. A standard phone wouldn't do anything other than what they do now-too many circuits? Too bad. Already on and the cell fills up? You stay on it. A high-priority plan could cost maybe $50/month more, and would kill off a low-priority phone when needed. This is like the business exec type plan.
Course people don't like the idea of paying for more importance, but it's sound in business models.
Let's just hope they don't try and patent it.
Look at Craig Reynolds' work at www.red3d.com. He developed a similar distributed system for use in computer animation in 1987. Very good for modelling groups of animals such as flocks or herds.
The general concept at use here - complex, adaptive behaviour resulting from local interactions between agents - is referred to as emergence, and has been a subject of research since the animation work of Reynolds' and the robotic work of Rodney Brooks (from about 1986 on).
It is good to see big corps showing an interest in it though.
And yeah, it seems pretty obvious to me too. But some people are married to the top-down, centralized approach I guess...
-- This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
This issue came up after the Sept 11th WTC and Pentagon attacks. They issued phones to police/fire/rescue that had some sort of priority over normal cell phones. They also claimed that is wouldn't cause normal peoples' phones to drop calls or get fast busy signals (How's that???)
As for allowing the user to choose the priority of their outbound call, how about having a $1.00/call surcharge for each high priority call made? That'd keep people from leaving the phone of 'high'.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.