How does mobility help distributed systems compute?

ABSTRACT: Brains are composed of connected neurons that compute by transmitting signals. The neurons are generally fixed in space, but the communication patterns that enable information processing change rapidly. By contrast, other biological systems, such as ant colonies, bacterial colonies, slime moulds and immune systems, process information using agents that communicate locally while moving through physical space. We refer to systems in which agents are strongly connected and immobile as solid, and to systems in which agents are not hardwired to each other and can move freely as liquid. We ask how collective computation depends on agent movement. A liquid cellular automaton (LCA) demonstrates the effect of movement and communication locality on consensus problems. A simple mathematical model pre

SUBMITTER: Vining WF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6553594 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature