Complexes

Marriott, Chris & Carlos Gershenson. Polyethism in a colony of artificial ants . C3 Report 2011.03. Abstract : We explore self-organizing strategies for role assignment in a foraging task carried out by a colony of artificial agents. Our strategies are inspired by various mechanisms of division of labor (polyethism) observed in eusocial insects like ants, termites, or bees. Specifically we instantiate models of caste polyethism and age or temporal polyethism to evaluate the benefits to foraging in a dynamic environment. Our experiment is directly related to the exploration/exploitation trade of in machine learning. Full text :  http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.3152

Gershenson, C. & D. A. Rosenblueth (2011). Self-organizing traffic lights at multiple-street intersections . C3 Report 2011.02 Summary : Traffic light coordination is a complex problem. In this paper, we extend previous work on an abstract model of city traffic to allow for multiple street intersections. We test a self-organizing method in our model, showing that it is close to theoretical optima and superior to a traditional method of traffic light coordination.    Abstract : The elementary cellular automaton following rule 184 can mimic particles flowing in one direction at a constant speed. This automaton can therefore model highway traffic. In a recent paper, we have incorporated intersections regulated by traffic lights to this model using exclusively elementary cellular automata. In such a paper, however, we only explored a rectangular grid. We now extend our model to more complex scenarios employing an hexagonal grid. This extension shows first that our model can readily i