{"id":855,"date":"2012-04-15T12:19:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-15T12:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/15\/logic-gates-made-of-live-crabs\/"},"modified":"2012-04-15T12:19:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-15T12:19:00","slug":"logic-gates-made-of-live-crabs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/15\/logic-gates-made-of-live-crabs\/","title":{"rendered":"Logic gates made of live crabs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Logic gates made of live crabs<\/a>:
<\/p>\n

In Robust Soldier Crab Ball Gate<\/a>, recently published in Complex Systems<\/em>, a Japanese-UK computer science team describe how they made functional logic gates by constructing a maze of narrow tunnels and spooking soldier crabs into running through them in predictable ways by exposing them to bird-of-prey silhouettes. Lead researcher Yukio-Pegio Gunji (Kobe University) and colleagues implemented a “billiard ball computer” (a computer that implements logic gates out of chutes through which balls are dropped, either colliding or falling straight through) using the crabs, who have a repertoire of deterministic flocking responses to various stimuli, including narrow passages and the presence of predator shadows. The result is a relatively functional AND gate and a less-reliable OR gate. A Technical Review<\/em> blog summarizes the method well:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When placed next to a wall, a leader will always follow the wall in a direction that can be controlled by shadowing the swarm from above to mimic to the presence of the predatory birds that eat the crabs. <\/p>\n

Under these conditions, a swarm of crabs will follow a wall like a rolling billiard ball. <\/p>\n

So what happens when two “crab balls” collide? According to Gunji and co’s experiments, the balls merge and continue in a direction that is the sum of their velocities. <\/p>\n

What’s more, the behaviour is remarkably robust to noise, largely because the crab’s individuals behaviours generates noise that is indistinguishable from external noise. These creatures have evolved to cope with noise.<\/p>\n

That immediately suggested a potential application in computing, say Gunji and co. If the balls of crabs behave like billiard balls, it should be straightforward to build a pattern of channels that act like a logic gate. \n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Computer Scientists Build Computer Using Swarms of Crabs <\/a><\/p>\n

(via Wired<\/a><\/i>)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Logic gates made of live crabs: In Robust Soldier Crab Ball Gate, recently published in Complex Systems, a Japanese-UK computer science team describe how they made functional logic gates by constructing a maze of narrow tunnels and spooking soldier crabs into running through them in predictable ways by exposing them to bird-of-prey silhouettes. Lead researcher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-dN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}