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Biomorphic Software
CowboyRobot writes "From the molecular structure of spiders' silk to the efficient use of energy by insects and fish, we can learn many things from Nature and apply them to our engineering tasks.
One thing that nature is particularly good at is the development of dynamic, self-organizing systems.
Ken Lodding is a software engineer at NASA and is currently developing 'swarm algorithms for groups of wind-driven, remote exploratory vehicles'.
He has a six-page article at Queue on 'biologically inspired computing', how to develop 'algorithmic design concepts distilled from biological systems, or processes.'"
The idea is not new, read the Turing's paper Intelligent Machinery about Pain & Pleasure machines. In short, machines behaves freely but are conditioned by two simple stimulus: 'pain' that forces behaviour to change, and 'pleasure' that stabilizes current behaviour.
What's in a sig?
The Encyclopedia at that link is nothing but the content from Wikipedia with added adverts (as they note in a tiny font at the bottom). In future, go to the source.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Hmmm...seems to me the first use of the term "Biomporphing" was in scientist and SF writer Dr. Charles Pellegrino's 1998 ecological thriller "Dust," I wasn't aware that it has come into use. That was the term in the novel for synthetic life forms like Dinosaurs cloned from recovered DNA, but with modifications to make them smaller and more docile for use as house pets. "Dust" describes a meltdown of the global ecology, one of the symptoms of which is swarms of trillions of suddenly-carniverous Dust Mites that consume whole towns full of people (and animals). This may have inspired Crichton to try for the some of the same scares in his 2002 novel "Prey," although its physically impossible for Crichton's nanites to move as fast as they do in the novel (due to Reynold's number), no so for Dust Mites. It wouldn't be the first time Crichton has borrowed from Pellegrino, who wrote a speculative article on "Dinosaur World Park," a place filled with Dinosaurs cloned from DNA traces on insects in amber in a 1985 issue of Omni, which Crichton acknowledges inspired Jurrasic Park. Strangely enough, the novel "Dust" also features technologies based on spider silk grown from genetically modified corn silk. I wonder if the poster has read this novel? Great read if you're into hard SF and thrillers, BTW.