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Computational Matter: Evolving Computational Functions in Nanoscale Materials

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Advances in Unconventional Computing

Part of the book series: Emergence, Complexity and Computation ((ECC,volume 23))

Abstract

Natural evolution has been manipulating the properties of proteins for billions of years. This ‘design process’ is completely different to conventional human design which assembles well-understood smaller parts in a highly principled way. In evolution-in-materio (EIM), researchers use evolutionary algorithms to define configurations and magnitudes of physical variables (e.g. voltages) which are applied to material systems so that they carry out useful computation. One of the advantages of this is that artificial evolution can exploit physical effects that are either too complex to understand or hitherto unknown. An EU funded project in Unconventional Computation called NASCENCE: Nanoscale Engineering of Novel Computation using Evolution, has the aim to model, understand and exploit the behaviour of evolved configurations of nanosystems (e.g. networks of nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes, liquid crystals) to solve computational problems. The project showed that it is possible to use materials to help find solutions to a number of well-known computational problems (e.g. TSP, Bin-packing, Logic gates, etc.).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    e is the charge on an electron.

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Acknowledgments

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement number 317662.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Hajo Broersma

  2. University of York, YO10 5DD, Heslington, York, England

    Julian F. Miller

  3. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Stefano Nichele

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  1. Hajo Broersma
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  1. Unconventional ComputingCentre, University of the Westof England Unconventional ComputingCentre, Bristol, United Kingdom

    Andrew Adamatzky

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Broersma, H., Miller, J.F., Nichele, S. (2017). Computational Matter: Evolving Computational Functions in Nanoscale Materials. In: Adamatzky, A. (eds) Advances in Unconventional Computing. Emergence, Complexity and Computation, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33921-4_16

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