Self-Organizing Circuit Reinvents Radio

PortWineBoy writes "An evolutionary computer program that controls circuits connected to transistors is told to 'breed' an oscillator. Instead, it breeds a radio receiver which picks up oscillation produced by a nearby computer to achieve the desired result. It seems interesting to me but does it have any implications or applications? Any thoughts on how something like this could be used elsewhere?"

Comments

evoloution

[guest12]

maybe this is how life evolved, biologically speaking

fp?

Different solutions

[bigberk]

I remember reading about something like this earlier, where they had a circuit that modified itself (it was implemented on an FPGA) and it was supposed to figure out how to solve a mathematical problem. After it randomly came up with a "working circuit", the engineers couldn't debug it -- until they figured out the FPGA circuit as implemented was making use of stray RF signals to help solve the "problem".

Just goes to show that there are tons of ways to solve problems. Perhaps we don't solve things so efficiently after all when left to our own methods?

Re:would a beowulf cluster...

[grant harris]

I still don't get the whole joke behind the "beowulf cluster" thing.