[Dprglist] Distributed processing: octopus

[Murray Altheim]

On 4/01/21 7:58 pm, David Anderson via DPRGlist wrote:
> I found this fascinating.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFP_AjJeP-M
> 
> TL;DW  Very smart animals.  Most of the brain seems to be in the arms,
> which can be driven from the central brain or act independently, or
> in concert with other arms, without going through the brain.  And the
> amazing color and shape-shifting skin also appears to be able to see.
Hi David,

This reminds me a bit of our ongoing robotics topic around the use of
distributed sensor-processors, e.g., the camera-as-sensor, the VL53L1X
time-of-flight sensor (the size of a grain of rice) with its own internal
processor, or using Arduino slaves with a Raspberry Pi master, basically
the idea of off-loading some of the sensor processing out to the sensors
themselves -- "smart sensors". So rather than having a robot with all of
its neurons in its head, some robots might have the majority of its
neurons in its arms (sensors), like the octopus.

----

On a somewhat related subject to the video, I highly recommend a book
that changed my perspective on long time-scales, the history of the
earth, and our ultimate impact upon it:

   The Ends of the World, by Peter Brannen
   https://kenyonreview.org/reviews/the-ends-of-the-world-by-peter-brannen-738439/

...and actually quite a fascinating read, such as Brannen's description
of the many bloom-and-die cycles of early earth biology.

Cheers,

Murray

...........................................................................
Murray Altheim <murray18 at altheim dot com>                       = =  ===
http://www.altheim.com/murray/                                     ===  ===
                                                                    = =  ===
     In the evening
     The rice leaves in the garden
     Rustle in the autumn wind
     That blows through my reed hut.
            -- Minamoto no Tsunenobu