Slime Mold Can Solve Exponentially Complicated Problems in Linear Time

Researchers from Lanzhou University in China have shown that the slime mold Physarum polycephalum is able to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem, a combinatorial test with exponentially increasing complexity, in linear time. Using focused light stimulus as negative feedback to maintain the criteria of the task, the authors demonstrated that this model was able to reliably output a high-quality solution. This is the latest development among many biology-inspired approaches for advanced processing in the evolution of computing.