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.'"

Comments

The Biomorphic Goldfish Algorithm

[march]

10 SWIM AROUND TANK
20 PRINT "LOOK A ROCK!"
30 GOTO 10

Re:The Biomorphic Goldfish Algorithm

[sdjunky]

'Updated Visual Basic version
Public Sub Initialize
Dim GFish as Fish
Set GFish = Me
GFish.Type = FISH_TYPES_GOLDFISH
Tank.AddFish(GFish)
GFish.Action = FISH_ACTIONS_SWIM
GFish.InitTimedAction(FISH_ACTIONS_LOOK_ROCK,60000 )
GFish.Go()
End Sub

Public Sub Terminate
Dim GFish as Fish
Set GFish = Me
GFish.Rotate(0,1,0,180)
GFish.Float(FISH_BALLAST_UP)
GFish.Eyes = FISH_EYES_MILKY
GFish.Wait(60000)
Toilet.AddFish(GFish)
Toilet.Flush()
End Sub

Not quite the same thing, but...

[AKAImBatman]

...related, is the practice of having a program interrogate its environment. Some of the most successful programs are highly portable pieces of code that check to see what OS services are available, what APIs are available, what dependency software is available, etc. and then constructs the final object tree based on the results.

While this is very difficult to do in C/C++, it's a very successful way of writing Java code. For example, a gaming timer I wrote first checks the JVM version. If it's on 1.5 it uses the new NANOTimer. If that fails, it checks the OS. If it's on Windows, it then checks for the presence of a native timer DLL. (Timing on Windows sucks.) If it fails to find and/or load the DLL, it then falls back to a clever algorithm for making the most of default Windows timing. If it's on some other OS, it uses the default timer (all OSes except windows can provide millisecond resolution without complaint).

Alien Engineers

[ReadbackMonkey]

I read things like this and can't help but thing about some alien engineers coming to earth, deciding that they don't have time to explore it properly, and plop down some solar powered "robots" to gather some data on the planet. A few millenia pass and some more alien engineers come by, having the same idea but being jerks, deciding to make "robots" that eat the solar powered "robots".

Jerks.

Re:Alien Engineers

[tgrigsby]

That's not so bad, really. The solar powered ones are still doing ok. The robots that eat the solar powered ones are flourishing as well. And there are even robots that eat those robots and so on. It's actually worked out alright, although the latest release of robots seems destined to eat every other robot and even themselves. But even those aren't the worst.

It's the robots that attempt to charge people a licensing fee for using Linux that really burn me up.

This is the way forward

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark Tilden has noticed that machines that mimic biology take a lot less computation resources than machines that are strictly programmed.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Mark%2 0T ilden

Trying to strictly control everything doesn't work well past a certain level of complexity. It's like capitalism vs communism or Cathedral vs Bazaar. I expect to see a lot more of this kind of project in the future.

Re:Predator or Prey?

[SatanicPuppy]

I have to disagree with the plausability.

The secret weapon they use to kill the rogue swarms of psycho nano cameras is a gunk impurity that got into the STERILE nano-construction area. Like that woudl never occur naturally in non-sterile (i.e Everywhere) areas of the world.

The other thing which got to me was the amount of processing power these nano clouds were assumed to have. A sophisticated predator-prey model that would be CAPABLE of evolving into what those evolved into would need tremendous processing power.

So, lets see, what they would have to have? They'd need high bandwodth that couldn't be jammed (they'd be pretty worthless if you could just turn on a jammer and have them fall apart). They'd need non-volitile memory, because they're solar powered, and if they didn't have it, they'd be stupid again every morning. They'd need a sophisticated distributed processing alogrythm with massive failure tolerance and freakishly complex load balancing (this is more possible than most of it). And beyond all this, they'd need to be able to be microscopic flying cameras that could kill people.

In biological terms, most species have a "specialization". Which means that most species have ONE thing that they do really well. Birds aren't too smart because flying is hard to do. Same with cheetas, because running that fast requires really specific evolution.

Those little nano-bots would have to do the thing they're specialized by the design to do...And everything else as well. Christ, he's got them mimicing human behavior by the end! That is such an incredible stretch! I love sci-fi, but that book had me sneering almost from the very beginning.

Re:Isn't all computing biologically inspired ?

[Apocalypse111]

If you are talking about creating an Artificial Intelligence to pass the Turing Test, then yes. For those not in the know, the Turing Test is a test for artificial intelligence based on social interactions. If a person interacting with an entity on-screen cannot tell if that entity is a human or an AI, then the AI passes the test and is considered "intelligent".

The problem with the Turing Test is that it biases AI towards a human-style intelect, where that might not be the best way (or even a good way) to make an AI. For all we know, a good AI might have a thought-process which, to us, would seem completely crazy.

Re:Predator or Prey?

[no longer myself]

How is this any scarier than "self-sustaining, swarms, of tiny" insects? Nature still has some of the scariest arsenals known to man. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find any mechination of man's that isn't handled better than those found in nature. We just haven't discovered effective ways of harnessing them.

Mild example: Did you know that a goldfish can see infrared radiation? That fish can see warm bodies through the walls in your house, and perhaps even the neighbor's house. But it takes some pretty sophisticated equipment for a human to achieve that end. Good thing that fish don't talk. ;-)