Nascence Project: Nanoscale Engineering for Novel Computation Using Evolution

摘要

Living systems are able to achieve prodigious feats of computation with remarkable speed and efficiency (e.g. navigation in a complex environment, object recognition, decision making, and reasoning). Many of these tasks have not been adequately solved using algorithms running on our most powerful computers. When one examines the physical structure of living systems it is very difficult to understand how indeed such systems are able to perform computation. Two things stand out. First, the simplest living systems have a complexity and sophistication that dwarfs manmade technology. Secondly, these living systems were not designed specifically to do computation.