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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 31 2017, @06:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the tux-is-that-you? dept.

Hungry penguins have inspired a novel way of making sure computer code in smart cars does not crash. Tools based on the way the birds co-operatively hunt for fish are being developed to test different ways of organising in-car software. The tools look for safe ways to organise code in the same way that penguins seek food sources in the open ocean. Experts said such testing systems would be vital as cars get more connected.

Engineers have often turned to nature for good solutions to tricky problems, said Prof Yiannis Papadopoulos, a computer scientist at the University of Hull who, together with Dr Youcef Gheraibia from Algeria, developed the penguin-inspired testing system. The way ants pass messages among nest-mates has helped telecoms firms keep telephone networks running, and many robots get around using methods of locomotion based on the ways animals move.

Penguins were another candidate, said Prof Papadopoulos, because millions of years of evolution has helped them develop very efficient hunting strategies. This was useful behaviour to copy, he said, because it showed that penguins had solved a tricky optimisation problem - how to ensure as many penguins as possible get enough to eat. [...] "There must be something special about their hunting strategy," he said, adding that an inefficient strategy would mean many birds starved.

Tux was not involved.


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  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday January 31 2017, @02:05PM

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 31 2017, @02:05PM (#461193) Homepage Journal

    Is it possible to mod an article down instead of a comment? While amusing to talk of penguins and programming, there is no technical information in this article at all. It is pure fluff. Not even a hint as to how they are going to reorganize the software process.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by KritonK on Tuesday January 31 2017, @02:10PM

    by KritonK (465) on Tuesday January 31 2017, @02:10PM (#461196)

    Perhaps they simply mean that, by using Linux instead of Windows, they achieved a significant decrease in the amount of software crashes.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2017, @08:59PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2017, @08:59PM (#461423)

    The real question here is why this is better than the Monte Carlo algorithm that's typically used for testing plane software. You can't necessarily foresee and test all possibile conditions, but if you test enough combinations of conditions you can be sure that the car is safe to whatever level of safety you need. You'll probably still find situations that don't work right, but they're rare enough that they can be fixed and hopefully, it takes long enough for that to happen that people don't get a bad attitude towards the technology.

    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday February 04 2017, @03:36PM

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 04 2017, @03:36PM (#462853) Homepage Journal

      My guess is that finding problems in one area of the software might be a clue that there would be other bugs in the same area. But that's a well-known enough fact that it hardly needs to be inspired by hungry penguins.