The BioWall: an electronic tissue for prototyping bio-inspired systems

Author

Tempesti, Gianluca ; Mange, Daniel ; Stauffer, André ; Teuscher, Christof

Author_Institution

Logic Syst. Lab., Swiss Fed. Inst. of Technol., Lausanne, Switzerland

fYear

2002

fDate

2002

Firstpage

221

Lastpage

230

Abstract

In this article, we present the BioWall, a giant reconfigurable computing tissue developed to implement machines according to the principles of our Embryonics (embryonic electronics) project. The BioWall´s size aid features are designed for public exhibition, but at the same time it represents an invaluable research tool, particularly since its complete programmability and cellular structure are extremely well adapted to the implementation of many different kinds of bio-inspired systems. To illustrate these capabilities, we present a set Of applications that range over many diverse sources of biological inspiration, from Embryonics´ ontogenetic systems, through epigenetic artificial neural networks, to phylogenetic evolving hardware. All these applications have been fully implemented and tested in hardware on the BioWall.

Keywords

biocomputing; neural nets; reconfigurable architectures; BioWall; Embryonics project; bio-inspired systems; bio-inspired systems prototyping; cellular structure; electronic tissue; epigenetic artificial neural networks; phylogenetic evolving hardware; programmability; reconfigurable computing tissue; Artificial neural networks; Embryo; Evolution (biology); Laboratories; Neural network hardware; Organisms; Phylogeny; Prototypes; Reconfigurable logic; Testing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Evolvable Hardware, 2002. Proceedings. NASA/DoD Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7695-1718-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/EH.2002.1029888

Filename

1029888