In general terms, an Embedded Systems is any device that includes a programmable computer for a specific task. Sometimes it is also said that, an Embedded Systems is nearly any computing system other than a desktop computer. Embedded Systems are found everywhere these days! Your cell phone, digital camera, portable video games, calculators, digital watches, and etc… the list can go on for a really long time.
This article is Part I of a series of articles which is an attempt to introduce the reader into the world of Embedded Systems and their applications in the industry. I have decided to divide the topic into several parts that will be presented gradually as I complete them. The objective of the series will be a general discussion of Embedded Systems and what they are. In the process, I will also show how to assemble a basic robot using a robotics kit provided by Parallax which will be controlled through the BASIC Stamp II microcontroller. Towards the end of the series, I will start using the Microsoft Robotics Studio to illustrate some of the features available through the new IDE provided by Microsoft, if time permits.
This gives you an idea of the broad application base of Embedded Systems. For self-organizing robotic systems, we want to construct the systems to be robust, flexible, independent, autonomous, which can adapt dynamically to the current conditions of their environments. In other words, they will exhibit some life-like intelligence, which are characterized by self-organization, self-configuration, self-adaptive, and self-repair. Distributed approaches seem desirable. However, it is well known that, for distributed approaches, it is difficult to predict the emerging behaviours from local interactions of individual agents, neither is it trivial to design rules for local interactions to generate a desired global behaviour.
As we know, biological Embedded Systems from macroscopic swarm systems of social insects to microscopic cellular systems, can generate robust and complex emerging behaviours through relatively simple local interactions subject to various kinds of uncertainties. Embryonic development of multi-cellular organisms is governed by gene regulatory networks (GRNs), which are a collection of genes that interact with each other and with other chemicals in the cell. Inspired by the major principles of gene regulation and cellular interactions in multi-cellular development, in this project, we aim to replicate biological robustness by organizing complex behaviour from locally interacting individuals using morphogenetic approaches, and eventually provide a self-organizing framework for Embedded Systems morphogenetic swarm robotic systems.
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