Furby
Current occupation: News poster
- Reaction score
- 144
If biomimicry is the instance of technology emulating natural processes, then this must be something like the opposite: researchers at Kobe University have built a computer out of crabs. Placed within a geometrically constrained environment, swarms of soldier crabs can be effectively used to emulate logic gates. In other words, researchers have replicated the fundamental workings of a computer--with crabs.
When two swarms of crabs meet in motion, they tend to compromise by merging and continuing on in a direction that is the sum of the two swarms’ velocities, and this is where the computing comes in. The researchers built a system of channels in an environment that funnel the crabs along, like electrons flowing through a computer (they are prodded along by a fake bird shadow that is cast from overhead). Using a group of 40 real soldier crabs, the researchers tried to cajole the group into acting like a logic gate.
www.popsci.com
When two swarms of crabs meet in motion, they tend to compromise by merging and continuing on in a direction that is the sum of the two swarms’ velocities, and this is where the computing comes in. The researchers built a system of channels in an environment that funnel the crabs along, like electrons flowing through a computer (they are prodded along by a fake bird shadow that is cast from overhead). Using a group of 40 real soldier crabs, the researchers tried to cajole the group into acting like a logic gate.
A Computer Constructed From a Consortium of Live Crabs
If biomimicry is the instance of technology emulating nature, then this must be something like the opposite: researchers at Kobe University have built a computer out of crabs. Placed within a geometrically constrained environment, swarms of soldier crabs can be effectively used to emulate logic...
www.popsci.com
Last edited by a moderator:
