A probabilistic movement model for shortest path formation in virtual ant-like agents

Chibaya, Colin; Bangay, Shaun D

Title: A probabilistic movement model for shortest path formation in virtual ant-like agents
Creator: Chibaya, Colin
Creator: Bangay, Shaun D
Subject: To be catalogued
Date Issued: 2007
Date: 2007
Type: text
Type: article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/433125
Identifier: vital:72945
Identifier: https://doi.org/10.1145/1292491.1292493
Description: We propose a probabilistic movement model for controlling ant-like agents foraging between two points. Such agents are all identical, simple, autonomous and can only communicate indirectly through the environment. These agents secrete two types of pheromone, one to mark trails towards the goal and another to mark trails back to the starting point. Three pheromone perception strategies are proposed (Strategy A, B and C). Agents that use strategy A perceive the desirability of a neighbouring location as the difference between levels of attractive and repulsive pheromone in that location. With strategy B, agents perceive the desirability of a location as the quotient of levels of attractive and repulsive pheromone. Agents using strategy C determine the product of the levels of attractive pheromone with the complement of levels of repulsive pheromone. We conduct experiments to confirm directionality as emergent property of trails formed by agents that use each strategy. In addition, we compare path formation speed and the quality of the formed path under changes in the environment. We also investigate each strategy's robustness in environments that contain obstacles. Finally, we investigate how adaptive each strategy is when obstacles are eventually removed from the scene and find that the best strategy of these three is strategy A. Such a strategy provides useful guidelines to researchers in further applications of swarm intelligence metaphors for complex problem solving.
Format: 10 pages
Format: pdf
Language: English
Relation: Proceedings of the 2007 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on IT research in developing countries
Relation: Chibaya, C. and Bangay, S., 2007, October. A probabilistic movement model for shortest path formation in virtual ant-like agents. In Proceedings of the 2007 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on IT research in developing countries (pp. 9-18)
Relation: Proceedings of the 2007 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on IT research in developing countries volume 2007 number 1 9 18 2007 978-1-59593-775-9
Rights: Publisher
Rights: Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the ACM Digital Library Statement (https://libraries.acm.org/digital-library/policies#anchor3)

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Bangay, Shaun Douglas (Dr)

RU Department of Computer Science

SDG 09. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

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