ABSTRACT
A thin-layer Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) medium shows the rich dynamics of excitation waves, including target waves, spiral waves and localised wave-fragments and their combination. An information processing, wet electronics and computing circuits prototyped in BZ medium includes chemical diodes, Boolean gates, neuromorphic architectures and associative memory, wave-based counters and arithmetic circuits. This chapter describes light-sensitive BZ medium using the two-variable Oregonator model adapted to a light-sensitive BZ reaction with applied illumination. It explores the Oregonator model as a virtual test bed in designing BZ medium-based computing devices which were implemented experimentally. Exploration of space with oxidation waves fronts in BZ medium has been studied in the context of maze solving, shortest paths finding and collision avoidance. Evaluating street networks in terms of earthquake vulnerability or selecting a safe path for the emergency landing of Unmanned aerial vehicles might be another application domain for excitable media.
