Analog computing method for solving two-point boundary value problems

Abstract

An analog computing method is proposed to accelerate the computation of two-point boundary value problems (BVPs). The analog network has many self-communicating nodes. The analog information (current and voltage) propagates through the network with much faster communication speed than a digital approach. The parallelism is inherent in the network. Physically imposing a two-point boundary condition on the analog network permits the BVP problem to be simulated and solved by measuring the distribution of stabilized voltage across the network. Two problems from robotics and computer vision are considered to illustrate the process.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>