Artificial innate immune system: An instant defence layer of embryonics

Abstract

Will mankind ever be able to construct the elusive 'perpetuum mobile'? We are still far from being able to design systems with a guaranteed finite lifetime, let alone those that we can confidently expect to function unaided in the presence of faults. For example, the Beagle II Mars mission just failed due to malfunction and, worse, the Columbia Space Shuttle suffered the same fate with the loss of many lives. In this context, it is unsurprising that fault tolerance is an increasing emphasis of research into reliable systems. Perhaps if we learn from nature we could design systems, which are tolerant against faults and are able to function properly. Through millions of years of evolution, living things have developed such characteristics. They are cell-based systems that possess an immune system providing an unparalleled defence against faults caused by foreign invaders. It therefore seems intuitive that a generic fault-tolerant hardware system that is inspired by biology should therefore be cell-based and possess some of the immune defence characteristics found in nature. This paper extends the current work on Embryonics (embryological electronics) at the University of the West of England. It combines internal self-healing characteristics of embryonic cellular array based systems with an instant defence layer, inspired by nature's innate immune system. © Springer-Verlag 2004.