New Research to Create Reliable Electronic Systems
University of the West of England, Bristol (10/02/08) Kelly, Jane; Price, Mary

University of the West of England (UWE) researchers are working with the University of York on creating electrical systems that can diagnose and fix their own faults and failures in ways similar to the human immune system. The Self-healing cellular Architectures for Biologically-inspire highly Reliable Electronic systems (SABRE) project will be based at Bristol Robotics lab, which is jointly run by the University of Bristol and UWE. The SABRE project aims to create electronic systems based on a structure of cells with the ability to work together to defend the integrity of the system, diagnose faults, and heal problems. Bristol Robotics Laboratory's Tony Pipe says that when an electronic system fails, it should be able to cope with minor faults and continue operating efficiently. He says the few existing electronic systems designed to be fault tolerant either replicate whole subsystems or revert to a safe mode when there is a malfunction. By comparison, he notes that hig hly complex living organisms such as the human body are able to handle malfunctions at a lower level, by defending the system and repairing damage to cells to maintain normal functionality. SABRE researches hope to emulate this ability in electronic systems to design nature-like, fault-tolerant electronic architectures.
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