How would a Grey Goo robot compute given that it has no fixed form?

This is something that confuses me with amorphous characters, monsters, robots etc... How do they compute when their particles don't have a fixed form? They are in a sense modular robots only taken to an extreme in size and number. Such a robot can freely transform, reassemble and other things. Take the T-1000 from Terminator Judgement Day. It can be blown to bits and always reform, that part is clear. What isn't clear is how it maintains memory and neural connections with such a makeup. Sure you can say that they do it wirelessly, but wouldn't there be too much interference and background noise?

This is somewhat addressed in the science newsjournal

"These soft circuit systems will act more like live cells, communicating with each other to form new circuits and moving around autonomously."

Basically recreating an organic brain, but if a Grey Goo robot were to be blown to bits it would lose its memory. If a Grey Goo robot were to have a computer ship inside it controlling it that could not be reformed. Many questions worth addressing.

If there was a way to make this more realistic by giving rules to the robots makeup it would be a big help, since I don't like handwaving everything into the story. The technological requirements as a advanced as necessary, since this is a very futuristic invention. And yes, the point of this robot is to reform if damaged, otherwise any other robot would do the trick.

posted over 4 years ago

System‭

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