Cellular Programming

We present a design approach for "smart surfaces" inspired by cellular automata. The aim is to construct and to program scalable distributed realtime interactive systems composed of inexpensive microcontrollers to build surfaces that interact physically with their environment. Our work is both pragmatic and integrated: it covers the entire chain from hardware considerations, a programming model based on a networked locally synchronous virtual machine, dedicated programming language features, a distributed embedded implementation and an integrated programming environment with a simulator implementation of the locally synchronous virtual machine. The platform which we have developed allows for arbitrary distributed algorithms to be implemented, including those that cannot perform scalably in realtime. We argue for a pragmatic coexistence of certain non-realtime algorithms together with "cellular" algorithms that operate much like cellular automata. Our "case study" is an application of this approach for modular interactive lighting systems.