  Chemically or optically powered active matter plays an increasingly important
role in materials design but its computational potential has yet to be explored
systematically. The competition between energy consumption and dissipation
imposes stringent physical constraints on the information transport in active
flow networks, facilitating global optimization strategies that are not well
understood. Here, we combine insights from recent microbial experiments with
concepts from lattice-field theory and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to
introduce a generic theoretical framework for active matter logic (AML).
Highlighting conceptual differences with classical and quantum computation, we
demonstrate how the inherent non-locality of incompressible active flow
networks can be utilized to construct universal logical operations, Fredkin
gates and memory storage in SR latches through the synchronized
self-organization of many individual network components. Our work lays the
conceptual foundation for developing autonomous microfluidic transport devices
driven by bacterial fluids, active liquid crystals or chemically engineered
motile colloids.
