POEtic Tissue: An Integrated Architecture for Bio-inspired Hardware

It is clear to all, after a moments thought, that nature has much we might be inspired by when designing our systems, for example: robustness, adaptability and complexity, to name a few. The implementation of bioinspired systems in hardware has however been limited, and more often than not been more a matter of artistry than engineering. The reasons for this are many, but one of the main problems has always been the lack of a universal platform, and of a proper methodology for the implementation of such systems. The ideas presented in this paper are early results of a new research project, "Reconfigurable POEtic Tissue". The goal of the project is the development of a hardware platform capable of implementing systems inspired by all the three major axes (phylogenesis, ontogenesis, and epigenesis) of bio-inspiration, in