Embryonics: A Macroscopic View of the Cellular Architecture

The ontogenetic development of living beings suggests the design of a new kind of multicellular automaton endowed with novel quasi-biological properties: self-repair and self-replication. In the framework of the Embryonics embryonic electronics project, we have developed such an automaton. Its macroscopic architecture is de ned by three features: multicellular organization, cellular di erentiation, and cellular division. Through a simple example, a stopwatch, we show that the arti cial organism possesses the macroscopic properties of self-replication cloning and self-repair. In order to cope with the complexity of real problems, the cell will be decomposed into an array of smaller elements, the molecules, themselves de ned by three features: multimolecular organization, self-test and self-repair, and nally cellular self-replication, which is the basis of the macroscopic process of cellular division. These microscopic properties are the subject of a companion paper 9 .

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: ICES
• Authors: Daniel Mange, André Stauffer, Gianluca Tempesti
• Keywords: Cellular Division, Hardware, ICES 1998, Macroscopic, Multicellular Automaton