Physarum Polycephalum is a single cell visible by unaided eye. This is a plasmodial, vegetative stage of acellular slime mould. This single cell has myriad of nuclei which contribute to a network of bio-chemical oscillators responsible for the slime mould’s distributed sensing, concurrent information processing and decision making, and parallel actuation. When presented with a spatial configuration of sources of nutrients, the slime mould spans the sources with networks of its protoplasmic tube. These networks belong to a family of planar proximity graphs. The protoplasmic networks also show a degree of similarity to vehicular transport networks. Previously, we have shown that the foraging behaviour of the slime mould can be applied in archaeological research to complement and enhance conventional geographic information system tools. The results produced suffered from limitation of a flat substrate: transport routes imitated by the slime mould did not reflect patterns of elevations. To overcome the limitation of the ‘flat world’ we constructed a three-dimensional model of Balkans. In laboratory experiments and computer modelling we uncovered patterns of the foraging behaviour that might shed a light onto development of Roman roads in the Balkans during the imperial period (1st century BC – 4th century AD).

During the past decades, computer science experts were inspired from the study of biological organisms. Moreover, bio-inspired algorithms were produced that many times can give excellent solutions with low computational cost in complex engineering problems. In our case, the plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum is capable of finding the shortest path solution between two points in a labyrinth. In this study, we implement a Cellular Automata (CA) model in hardware, which attempts to describe and, moreover, mimic the behavior of the plasmodium in a maze. Beyond the successful implementation of the CA-based Physarum model in software, in order to take full advantage of the inherent parallelism of CA, we focus on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implementation of the proposed model. Namely, two different implementations were considered here. Their difference is on the desired precision produced by the numerical representation of CA model parameters. Based on the corresponding results of the shortest path in the labyrinth,the modeling efficiency of both approaches was compared depending on the resulting error propagation. The presented FPGA implementations succeed to take advantage of the CA's inherit parallelism and improve the performance of the CA algorithm when compared with software in terms of computational speed and power consumption. As a result, the implementations presented here, can also be considered as a preliminary CA-based Physarum polycephalum IP core which produces a biological inspired solution to the shortest-path problem.

In this paper we present a model based on the parallel computational tool of cellular automata (CA) capable of simulating the process of disembarking in a small airplane seat layout, corresponding to Airbus A320/ Boeing 737 layout, in search of ways to make it faster and safer under normal evacuation conditions, as well as emergency scenarios. The proposed model is highly customizable, with the number of exits, the walking speed of passengers, depending on their sex, age and height, and the effects of retrieving and carrying luggage. Additionally, the presence of obstacles in the aisles as well as the emergence of panic being parameters whose values can be varied in order to enlighten the disembarking and emergency evacuation processes are considered in detail. The simulation results were compared to existing aircraft disembarking and evacuation times and indicate the efficacy of the proposed model in investigating and revealing passenger attributes during these processes in all the examined cases. Moreover, we parallelized our code in order to run on a graphics processing unit (GPU) using the CUDA programming language, speeding up the simulation process. Finally, in order to present a fully dynamical anticipative real-time system helpful for decision-making we implemented the proposed CA model in a field programmable gate array (FPGA) device, and recreated the results given by the software simulations in a fraction of the time. We then compared and exported the performance results among a sequential software implementation, the implementation running on a GPU, and a hardware implementation, proving the consequent acceleration that results from the parallel CA implementation in specific hardware.

No abstract

No abstract

The continuous increment in the performance of classical computers has been driven to its limit. New ways are studied to avoid this oncoming bottleneck and many answers can be found. An example is the Belousov–Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction which includes some fundamental and essential characteristics that attract chemists, biologists, and computer scientists. Interaction of excitation wave-fronts in BZ system, can be interpreted in terms of logical gates and applied in the design of unconventional hardware components. Logic gates and other more complicated components have been already proposed using different topologies and particular characteristics. In this study, the inherent parallelism and simplicity of Cellular Automata (CAs) modeling is combined with an Oregonator model of light-sensitive version of BZ reaction. The resulting parallel and computationally-inexpensive model has the ability to simulate a topology that can be considered as a one-bit full adder digital component towards the design of an Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU).

No abstract

Self-aware and self-expressive physical systems are inspiring new methodologies for engineering solutions of complex computing problems. Among many other examples, the slime mold Physarum Polycephalum exhibits self-awareness and self-expressiveness while adapting to changes in its dynamical environment and solving resource-consuming problems like shortest path, proximity graphs or optimization of transport networks. As such, the modeling of the slime mold's behavior is essential when designing bio-inspired algorithms and hardware prototypes. The goal of this paper is to combine one of the powerful parallel computational tools, cellular automata (CA) with the adaptive potential of Physarum slime mold. Namely, we propose a CA model and multi-agent approach to imitate the behavior of the plasmodium. We then test the efficacy of the proposed model on graph problems such as the maze problem or the traveling salesman problem (TSP). Finally, the virtual Physarum model is evaluated on a data set for pattern recognition purposes and achieves to form very effectively the letters of the alphabet, especially when compared with real experiments performed to prove the efficacy of the proposed model. Furthermore, to exploit the CA's inherent parallelism and make the model's responses faster, both GPU and hardware implementations are proposed and compared. As a result, an accelerated virtual lab is developed which uses a multi-agent CA model to describe the behavior of plasmodium and can be used as an intelligent, autonomous, self-adaptive system in various heterogeneous and unknown environments spanning from different types of graph problems up to real life-time applications.