Lionel and Dave and the Butcher made three
The self-organizing strategies of eusocial insects are now well known and well studied in biology and applications to computation are abundant.
One of the more remarkable behaviors observed is the ability of rather simple, unintelligent agents (individual insects) to coordinate their behavior to establish a rather fluid and adaptive behavior on the colony level. The phenomenon of stigmergy (communication via the environment) has now been modeled and applied in artificial simulations to achieve similar results among rather simple artificial agents cooperating in multi-agent systems.
However, many of these applications focus on homogeneous colonies, where each agent has the same behavioral capabilities. Nonetheless, observations of insects show that in many colonies the individuals are not always homogeneous. Colonies consist of heterogeneous agents, whether these agents display morphological differences (i.e. distinct castes) or merely behavioral differences. The effects of this stratification of agents in a colony is referred to as division of labor (DOL) or by the term polyethism. (…)
The experiment detailed below involves a colony of artificial ants engaged in a foraging task.
{ Chris Marriott and Carlos Gershenson, Polyethism in a colony of artificial ants, 2011 | Arvix | Continue reading }
strip { Will Eisner }
