These are bona fide examples of computation, with results immediately consumed. Computation without output is sort of pointless.
They are not very different from a computation inside an injection controller of an ICE, with its results consumed within microseconds, as motions of injection valves. They key difference is the intermediate use of an electronic computer, an MCU, instead of a purely mechanical and pretty inflexible device, the camshaft.
Certainly we could replace a swashplate with some electric or hydraulic actuators driven by an MCU if we needed to compute something more complex than what a swashplate currently computes, much as we did with the camshaft. This is not very probable though, because a new system should also work unpowered to allow auto-rotation, to say nothing of higher reliability requirements than a system for a car.
My point is that, in that scenario, what replaces the swashplate is mostly the electric or hydraulic actuators, not the MCU. If it wasn't, you'd make the swashplate mechanism much smaller, lighter, and cheaper, even if you had reliability requirements your MCU couldn't meet.
In the north-pointing chariot or the Antikythera mechanism, the differential performed a computational function, with its action of transmitting power quite peripheral to that; in your car's rear end, it performs a power-transmission function, with its action of computation quite peripheral to that.
The same situation holds with transistors. You can use a 2N7000 to toggle a light or control a relay or a motor, or you can use it for (digital or analog) computation.
If you're using it in an NMOS NOT gate or the input stage of an op-amp, you're using it for computation, and so you wish it were smaller; it would work better if it were smaller because then it wouldn't need so much energy to turn it on or off. (For analog computation, you only wish it were smaller up to a point, because at extremely small sizes that makes it more sensitive to noise, but you wish it were really a lot smaller than a 2N7000.) A 2N5457 is generally better for an amplifier input stage, and the no-longer-available discrete signal MOSFETs are probably better for NMOS NOT gates. The N-MOSFETs integrated into a chip are enormously better at computation than a 2N7000.
By the same token, though, a 2N5457 or signal MOSFET is much worse than a 2N7000 at power transmission. If you're using it to PWM a motor, you wish it were larger; it would work better if it were larger because then it would be at less risk of overheating, be more efficient at a given current level, and be able to control a bigger motor. An IRF630 is a better power MOSFET than a 2N7000; an IRF540N is better still. But they're enormously worse at computation than a 2N7000.
Helicopter swashplates and differentials are very much on the power-transmission end of the spectrum, not the computation end, even though they cannot avoid doing computation as part of their job.
They are not very different from a computation inside an injection controller of an ICE, with its results consumed within microseconds, as motions of injection valves. They key difference is the intermediate use of an electronic computer, an MCU, instead of a purely mechanical and pretty inflexible device, the camshaft.
Certainly we could replace a swashplate with some electric or hydraulic actuators driven by an MCU if we needed to compute something more complex than what a swashplate currently computes, much as we did with the camshaft. This is not very probable though, because a new system should also work unpowered to allow auto-rotation, to say nothing of higher reliability requirements than a system for a car.