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Self-Repairing Spacecraft Uses Ant Logic
Elitist_Phoenix wrote to mention a New Scientist story about what could be the first steps towards a self-repairing spacecraft. From the article: "The team at CSIRO, Australia's national research organisation, is working with NASA on the project and has so far created a model skin made up of 192 separate cells. Behind each cell is an impact sensor and a processor equipped with algorithms that allow it to communicate only with its immediate neighbours. Just as ants secrete pheromones to help guide other ants to food, the CSIRO algorithms leave digital messages in cells around the system, indicating for instance the position of the boundary around a damaged region. The cell's processor can use this information to route data around the affected area."
"Honey, there's a Mars Probe carrying away our potato salad! I told you we shouldn't have picnicked near JPL."
Seriously, though:
"Other groups are developing impact sensor systems controlled by a centralised processor. But such systems would fail if the area containing the processor were damaged. So a distributed system could be much more reliable, says Bill Prosser of NASA's Nondestructive Evaluation Sciences Branch in Langley, Virginia."
That kind of seems like overkill. It's like "One processor is too risky, so we should instead have 100." Have 3 processors and 3 busses. If something can damage all 3, then the probe is F'd beyond all repair anyhow. You have to wire power to 100 processors anyhow if you do that such that a damaged power bus can still take out multiple panels. Weight is premium on probes, and 99 processors is not a very effective use of weight.
Table-ized A.I.