Contributed talk in Lightning Talks, July 31, 2019, 10:20 a.m. in room USB.1.006

Steering the Growth of Adaptive Self-Preserving Dissipative Structures

Matthew Egbert, Yan Kolezhitskiy, Nathaniel Virgo

watch Publication This paper introduces a model inspired by the remarkable electrochemical deposition experiments conducted by Gor- don Pask and Stafford Beer in the 1950s. The model sim- ulates the growth and decay of dendritic structures that are produced when an electric potential is applied across elec- trodes placed in an acidic solution of ferrous sulfate. Pask & Beer reported the ability to grow functional structures in such a real-world system by varying the voltage applied across the electrodes, but the details of their apparatus and methods are unavailable. As a first step toward recreating their results, we use the model to investigate three strategies for varying the applied electrical current so as to guide the formation of structures into targeted forms. Each presented strategy succeeds at influencing the growth of the structure, with the most successful strategy involv- ing a ‘constant-current’ feedback mechanism combined with an externally driven oscillation. In the discussion, we com- pare the adaptation of these structures with various biologi- cal adaptive processes, including evolution and metabolism- based adaptive behaviour.