MIT: How do the ants decide where they will move their nests? Can this particular question teach one of the largest technology universities? Computer scientists are looking for effective ways to collect data from distributed sensor networks, and according to MIT researchers ants can help.
It turns out that the frequency with which ants explode and collide with each other as they roam about looking for a new colony is a very good indication of how researchers should look for.
When many ants gather in a nest, workers in the ant colony pick up the queen and carry her to the chosen location, says Cameron Musco, a graduate student college student του MIT στο τμήμα ηλεκτρολογίας και scienceof computers.
The researcher and his team examined the mathematics behind the behavior of the ants looking for an effective way of assessing the density of the population.
Roaming and possible bumps into what researchers call random walks gives ants a sense of how much a critical mass of other ants are interested in finding a new colony.
Ο Musco και οι συνεργάτες του μιμήθηκαν τη συμπεριφορά των μυρμηγκιών "με ένα μαθηματικό μοντέλο με τυχαίες βόλτες στην οποία μια περιοχή χωρίζεται σε ένα πλέγμα κόμβων, και κάθε κόμβος συνδέεται με μια σειρά από άλλους κόμβους. Στο τυχαίο περίπατο το μοντέλο των μυρμηγκιών που δημιούργησαν μπορούσε να κινηθεί σε οποιοδήποτε άλλο κόμβο που συνδέεται με αυτόν στο οποίο βρίσκονται, συμπεριλαμβανομένου και αυτού που άφησαν.
Relatively quickly, the frequency with which ants run provides a reliable estimate of how many other ants are in the area, according to the algorithm developed by the team.
The researchers report that random walks can produce mpriceabout as accurate as random sampling, which polls a number of randomly selected nodes in a network. This makes the method very useful in networks where it is impossible to test randomly because there is no complete list of network elements.
For example, it could be used if one wanted to find the political beliefs of members of a social network for which no list of members is available, making it impossible to create a random sample. A random walk could provide the information by going from a person to their contacts person of that, in their contacts and so on, counting, say, Democrats and Republicans.
Read more:
http://news.mit.edu/2016/ant-colony-behavior-better-algorithms-network-communication-0713