Search results for "Analog computation"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
On the effect of analog noise in discrete-time analog computations
1998
We introduce a model for analog computation with discrete time in the presence of analog noise that is flexible enough to cover the most important concrete cases, such as noisy analog neural nets and networks of spiking neurons. This model subsumes the classical model for digital computation in the presence of noise. We show that the presence of arbitrarily small amounts of analog noise reduces the power of analog computational models to that of finite automata, and we also prove a new type of upper bound for the VC-dimension of computational models with analog noise.
Tractional Motion Machines extend GPAC-generable functions
2012
In late 17th century there appeared the Tractional Motion instruments, mechanical devices which plot the curves solving differential equations by the management of the tangent. In early 20th century Vannevar Bush’s Differential Analyzer got the same aim: in this paper we’ll compare the Differential Analyzer mathematical model (the Shannon’s General Purpose Analog Computer, or GPAC) with the Tractional Motion Machine potentials. Even if we will not arrive in defining the class of the functions generated by Tractional Motion Machines, we’ll see how this class will strictly extend the GPAC-generable functions.
Tractional Motion Machines: Tangent-Managing Planar Mechanisms as Analog Computers and Educational Artifacts
2012
Concrete and virtual machines play a central role in the both Unconventional Computing (machines as computers) and in Math Education (influence of artifacts on reaching/producing abstract thought). Here we will examine some fallouts in these fields for the Tractional Motion Machines, planar mechanisms based on some devices used to plot the solutions of differential equations by the management of the tangent since the late 17th century.