Quick Search Adv. Search

J4

• article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Towards Physarum Robots: Computing and Manipulating on Water Surface

Andrew Adamatzky; Jeff Jones   

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of the West of England, Bristol BS16 1QY, United Kingdom
  • Received:2008-08-28 Revised:2008-10-27 Online:2008-12-30 Published:2008-10-27
  • Contact: Andrew Adamatzky

Abstract: Plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum is an ideal biological substrate for implementing concurrent and parallel com-putation, including combinatorial geometry and optimization on graphs. The scoping experiments on Physarum computing in conditions of minimal friction, on the water surface were performed. The laboratory and computer experimental results show that plasmodium of Physarum is capable of computing a basic spanning tree and manipulating of light-weight objects. We speculate that our results pave the pathways towards the design and implementation of amorphous biological robots.

Key words: amorphous robots, biological computing, unconventional computation, amoeba