New Senses from States

The use of simple states would suggest we could do some interesting things here. 

Spidey Senses’ Could Help Autonomous Machines See Better
Purdue University News
By Kayla Wiles

Researchers at Purdue University, Nanyang Technology University in Singapore, and ETH Zurich in Switzerland have developed sensors inspired by spiders, bats, birds, and other animals to help autonomous machines navigate in dangerous environments and avoid accidents. In nature, once a particular level of force activates the mechanoreceptors of an animal, they compute information by switching from one state to another. The researchers designed their mechanosensors to do the same, and to use these on/off states to interpret signals. Said Purdue researcher Andres Arrieta, "With the help of machine learning algorithms, we could train these sensors to function autonomously with minimum energy consumption."