Evolving genetic regulatory networks for hardware fault tolerance

Abstract. We present a new approach that is able to produce an increased fault tolerance in bio-inspired electronic circuits. To this end, we designed hardware-friendly genetic regulatory networks based on a bio-inspired hardware architecture called POEtic tissue. To assess its preliminary functionality, the parameters of the genetic regulatory networks were evolved using genetic algorithms to achieve elementary behaviours, including patch growth and oscillations at various frequencies. The tolerance to faults was explored by inflicting several types of damage, and results show that the system exhibits capabilities to recover from them. 1