Richard Mayne Richard.Mayne@uwe.ac.uk
Lecturer in Maths Supporting Science
On the development of slime mould morphological, intracellular and heterotic computing devices
Mayne, Richard
Authors
Abstract
The use of live biological substrates in the fabrication of unconventional computing (UC) devices is steadily transcending the barriers between science fiction and reality, but efforts in this direction are impeded by ethical considerations, the field’s restrictively broad multidisciplinarity and our incomplete knowledge of fundamental biological processes. As such, very few functional prototypes of biological UC devices have been produced to date. This thesis aims to demonstrate the computational polymorphism and polyfunctionality of a chosen biological substrate — slime mould Physarum polycephalum, an arguably ‘simple’ single-celled organism — and how these properties can be harnessed to create laboratory experimental prototypes of functionally-useful biological UC prototypes. Computing devices utilising live slime mould as their key constituent element can be developed into a) heterotic, or hybrid devices, which are based on electrical recognition of slime mould behaviour via machine-organism interfaces, b) whole-organism-scale morphological processors, whose output is the organism’s morphological adaptation to environmental stimuli (input) and c) intracellular processors wherein data are represented by energetic signalling events mediated by the cytoskeleton, a nano-scale protein network. It is demonstrated that each category of device is capable of implementing logic and furthermore, specific applications for each class may be engineered, such as image processing applications for morphological processors and biosensors in the case of heterotic devices. The results presented are supported by a range of computer modelling experiments using cellular automata and multi-agent modelling. We conclude that P. polycephalum is a polymorphic UC substrate insofar as it can process multimodal sensory input and polyfunctional in its demonstrable ability to undertake a variety of computing problems. Furthermore, our results are highly applicable to the study of other living UC substrates and will inform future work in UC, biosensing, and biomedicine.
Citation
Mayne, R. On the development of slime mould morphological, intracellular and heterotic computing devices. (Thesis). University of the West of England. Retrieved from https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/921284
Thesis Type | Thesis |
---|---|
Publicly Available Date | Jun 7, 2019 |
Keywords | slime mould, unconventional computing |
Public URL | https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/921284 |
Award Date | Jan 1, 2016 |
Files
RMayne_Thesis_Final.pdf
(35.3 Mb)
PDF
You might also like
Propagation of electrical signals by fungi
(2023)
Journal Article
Contactless sensing of liquid marbles for detection, characterisation & computing
(2019)
Journal Article
Neuromorphic liquid marbles with aqueous carbon nanotube cores
(2019)
Journal Article
Marimo machines: Oscillators, biosensors and actuators
(2019)
Journal Article
Interspecies Urban Planning, Reimaging City Infrastructures with Slime Mould
(2019)
Book Chapter
Downloadable Citations
About UWE Bristol Research Repository
Administrator e-mail: repository@uwe.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search