

Decoding the Remarkable Algorithms of Ants - digital55
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/decoding-the-remarkable-algorithms-of-ants/

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yeureka
Back in 2001 I was working on an new app that was designed to generate
efficient routes for garbage collection trucks for a region of Portugal. The
government of that region wanted to minimize fuel consumption and travel
times. This is basically the classical Traveling Salesman Problem. We soon
realized that using brute force to try all possible combinations would be
impossible and someone handed me a research paper on using Ant Colony Systems
to solve the Travelling Salesman problem. I was skeptical, but after
implementing it and comparing the results with the brute force generated data
( that took a LOT more time to produce ) I was blown away. The results weren't
perfect but good enough to be a vast improvement on the routes used before.

Emergent behavior can be amazing.

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andy_ppp
Was it this paper?

[http://people.idsia.ch/~luca/acs-bio97.pdf](http://people.idsia.ch/~luca/acs-
bio97.pdf)

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cristianpascu
This is yet another example of concept that is widely used but, AFAIK, has no
clear definition and falls into the larger picture of consciousness: instinct.
Actions that animals just do without any prior learning period. Examples are
everywhere in nature. And this is puzzling to say the least.

Standard evolutionary picture posits that behavior is emergent on underling
neurological structures, basically all the way down to chemical reactions.
This is a premise and in no way yet proven.

But, as far as we know, physical laws do now allow behavior and functions,
that is result-oriented actions (series of events and causal interactions).
Many confuse complexity (as in "many things brought together in fancy patterns
[1]), with complexity of systems that perform a function. The best definition
that I could come up with for the latter has to do with a consistent
transformation of one form of energy into another form with a clear result
that is not just a mere physical consequence of the reactions initianing the
process (such as pressure inside earth that cause a vulcano erruption). It
should be clear to anyone that ants digging trough the dirt is categorically
different than water flowing down the hill.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YedgubRZva8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YedgubRZva8)

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jcr
While looking for an accessible copy of the paywalled _Nature_ paper, " _The
rewards of restraint in the collective regulation of foraging by harvester ant
colonies_ ," I spotted the following paper which might be useful to some:

" _Dispersion and Line Formation in Artificial Swarm Intelligence_ "

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.0014](http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.0014)

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irickt
[http://web.stanford.edu/~dmgordon/articles/doi/10.1038-natur...](http://web.stanford.edu/~dmgordon/articles/doi/10.1038-nature12137/nature12137.pdf)

