Ontogenetic Development and Fault Tolerance in the POEtic Tissue

In this article, we introduce the approach to the realization of ontogenetic development and fault tolerance that will be implemented in the POEtic tissue, a novel reconfigurable digital circuit dedicated to the realization of bio-inspired systems. The modelization in electronic hardware of the developmental process of multi-cellular biological organisms is an approach that could become extremely useful in the implementation of highly complex systems, where concepts such as self-organization and fault tolerance are key issues. The concepts presented in this article represent an attempt at finding a useful set of mechanisms to allow the implementation in digital hardware of a bio-inspired developmental process with a reasonable overhead

A POEtic Architecture for Bio-Inspired Hardware

The implementation of bio-inspired systems in hardware has traditionally been more a matter of artistry than of method. The reasons are multiple, but one of the main problems has always been the lack of a universal platform, of a standardized architecture, and of a proper methodology for the implementation of such systems. The ideas presented in this article are the first results of a new research project, "Reconfigurable POEtic Tissue". The goal of the project is the development of a hardware platform capable of implementing systems inspired by all the three major axes (phylogenesis, ontogenesis, and epigenesis) of bio-inspiration in digital hardware. A novel cellular architecture, capable of exploiting the main features of the future POEtic tissue and compatible with a relatively automatic design methodology, is then presented

Unicellular self-healing electronic array

This paper presents on-line fault detection and fault repair capability of our Unitronics architecture, based on a bio-inspired prokaryotic bacterial colony model. At the device programming level, it appears as a cellular FPGA-like system; however, underlying structures transpose it into an inherently self-healing and fault tolerant electronics system. An e-puck object avoidance robot controller was built to demonstrate all the underlying theories of our research. The robot successfully demonstrated that it was able to cope with multiple, simultaneously occurring faults on-line whilst the robot was being controlled to move in a „figure 8‟-like manner. Integrity of the system is continuously monitored on-line, and if a fault is detected its location is automatically identified. Detection will trigger an on-line self-repair process. The amount of repair only depends on the number of spare cells the system is equipped with. The embedded fault repair mechanism uses significantly less memory for gene storage and considerably less hardware overall for target system implementation than any previously proposed bio-inspired architecture

POEtic Tissue: An Integrated Architecture for Bio-inspired Hardware

It is clear to all, after a moments thought, that nature has much wemight be inspired by when designing our systems, for example: robustness, adaptability and complexity, to name a few. The implementation of bio-inspired systems in hardware has however been limited, and more often than not been more a matter of artistry than engineering. The reasons for this are many, but one of the main problems has always been the lack of a universal platform, and of a proper methodology for the implementation of such systems. The ideas presented in this paper are early results of a new research project, "Reconfigurable POEtic Tissue". The goal of the project is the development of a hardware platform capable of implementing systems inspired by all three major axes (phylogenesis, ontogenesis, and epigenesis) of bio-inspiration, in digital hardware

SABRE: A bio-inspired fault-tolerant electronic architecture

As electronic devices become increasingly complex, ensuring their reliable, fault-free operation is becoming correspondingly more challenging. It can be observed that, in spite of their complexity, biological systems are highly reliable and fault tolerant. Hence, we are motivated to take inspiration for biological systems in the design of electronic ones. In SABRE (self-healing cellular architectures for biologically inspired highly reliable electronic systems), we have designed a bio-inspired fault-tolerant hierarchical architecture for this purpose. As in biology, the foundation for the whole system is cellular in nature, with each cell able to detect faults in its operation and trigger intra-cellular or extra-cellular repair as required. At the next level in the hierarchy, arrays of cells are configured and controlled as function units in a transport triggered architecture (TTA), which is able to perform partial-dynamic reconfiguration to rectify problems that cannot be solved at the cellular level. Each TTA is, in turn, part of a larger multi-processor system which employs coarser grain reconfiguration to tolerate faults that cause a processor to fail. In this paper, we describe the details of operation of each layer of the SABRE hierarchy, and how these layers interact to provide a high systemic level of fault tolerance. © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd

Bio-inspired cellular machines:towards a new electronic paper architecture

Information technology has only been around for about fifty years. Although the beginnings of automatic calculation date from as early as the 17th century (W. Schickard built the first mechanical calculator in 1623), it took the invention of the transistor by W. Shockley, J. Bardeen and W. Brattain in 1947 to catapult calculators out of the laboratory and produce the omnipresence of information and communication systems in today's world. Computers not only boast very high performance, capable of carrying out billions of operations per second, they are taking over our world, working their way into every last corner of our environment. Microprocessors are in everything, from the quartz watch to the PC via the mobile phone, the television and the credit card. Their continuing spread is very probable, and they will even be able to get into our clothes and newspapers. The incessant search for increasingly powerful, robust and intelligent systems is not only based on the improvement of technologies for the manufacture of electronic chips, but also on finding new computer architectures. One important source of inspiration for the research of new architectures is the biological world. Nature is fascinating for an engineer: what could be more robust, intelligent and able to adapt and evolve than a living organism? Out of a simple cell, equipped with its own blueprint in the form of DNA, develops a complete multi-cellular organism. The characteristics of the natural world have often been studied and imitated in the design of adaptive, robust and fault-tolerant artificial systems. The POE model resumes the three major sources of bio-inspiration: the evolution of species (P: phylogeny), the development of a multi-cellular organism by division and differentiation (O: ontogeny) and learning by interaction with the environment (E: epigenesis). This thesis aims to contribute to the ontogenetic branch of the POE model, through the study of three completely original cellular machines for which the basic element respects the six following characteristics: it is (1) reconfigurable, (2) of minimal complexity, (3) present in large numbers, (4) interconnected locally with its neighboring elements, (5) equipped with a display capacity and (6) with sensor allowing minimal interaction. Our first realization, the BioWall, is made up of a surface of 4,000 basic elements or molecules, capable of creating all cellular systems with a maximum of 160 × 25 elements. The second realization, the BioCube, transposes the two-dimensional architecture of the BioWall into a two-dimensional space, limited to 4 × 4 × 4 = 64 basic elements or spheres. It prefigures a three-dimensional computer built using nanotechnologies. The third machine, named BioTissue, uses the same hypothesis as the BioWall while pushing its performance to the limits of current technical possibilities and offering the benefits of an autonomous system. The convergence of these three realizations, studied in the context of emerging technologies, has allowed us to propose and define the computer architecture of the future: the electronic paper

Evolutionary morphogenesis for multi-cellular systems

With a gene required for each phenotypic trait, direct genetic encodings may show poor scalability to increasing phenotype length. Developmental systems may alleviate this problem by providing more efficient indirect genotype to phenotype mappings. A novel classification of multi-cellular developmental systems in evolvable hardware is introduced. It shows a category of developmental systems that up to now has rarely been explored. We argue that this category is where most of the benefits of developmental systems lie (e.g. speed, scalability, robustness, inter-cellular and environmental interactions that allow fault-tolerance or adaptivity). This article describes a very simple genetic encoding and developmental system designed for multi-cellular circuits that belongs to this category. We refer to it as the morphogenetic system. The morphogenetic system is inspired by gene expression and cellular differentiation. It focuses on low computational requirements which allows fast execution and a compact hardware implementation. The morphogenetic system shows better scalability compared to a direct genetic encoding in the evolution of structures of differentiated cells, and its dynamics provides fault-tolerance up to high fault rates. It outperforms a direct genetic encoding when evolving spiking neural networks for pattern recognition and robot navigation. The results obtained with the morphogenetic system indicate that this "minimalist” approach to developmental systems merits further stud

On microelectronic self-learning cognitive chip systems

After a brief review of machine learning techniques and applications, this Ph.D. thesis examines several approaches for implementing machine learning architectures and algorithms into hardware within our laboratory. From this interdisciplinary background support, we have motivations for novel approaches that we intend to follow as an objective of innovative hardware implementations of dynamically self-reconfigurable logic for enhanced self-adaptive, self-(re)organizing and eventually self-assembling machine learning systems, while developing this new particular area of research. And after reviewing some relevant background of robotic control methods followed by most recent advanced cognitive controllers, this Ph.D. thesis suggests that amongst many well-known ways of designing operational technologies, the design methodologies of those leading-edge high-tech devices such as cognitive chips that may well lead to intelligent machines exhibiting conscious phenomena should crucially be restricted to extremely well defined constraints. Roboticists also need those as specifications to help decide upfront on otherwise infinitely free hardware/software design details. In addition and most importantly, we propose these specifications as methodological guidelines tightly related to ethics and the nowadays well-identified workings of the human body and of its psyche