Neural building blocks

A new kind of artifacts called intelligent artifacts was developed. These artifacts consist of a number of building blocks with individual processing and communication. By assembling the building blocks into a structure, the user can develop both physical and functional structures. Hence, the user can be programming a behavior of the system by building a physical structure. Some building blocks can be pure processing units, whereas other can include actuation or sensing. The processing in the individual building block can be arithmetic operations, behaviors in a behavior-based system, or similar. Here, the processing in the form of artificial neurons is introduced. Each building block is viewed as a neuron and the connections between building blocks are viewed as synapses. By attaching building blocks together, it is possible to make physical, artificial neural networks.