The Social Insect Metaphor

Adam Dennis,Kate Patterson,

Curtis Sanford,Andrew Vanderveen

Rationale

• Intelligent packets, called “Ants”, that interact to keep the contents of the routing tables up to date.

• These Ants are only capable of simple stochastic decisions influenced by the availability of previously laid stigmergic, volatile trails.

Goals of Ants

• To reach the “food” (destination), and make a successful return path

Drawbacks

• On encountering multiple stigmergic trails, an Ant will probabilistically choose the route with greatest stigmergic reinforcement.

• Naturally, this will correspond to the ‘fastest’ route to the food.

AntNet

• Created by Di Caro and Dorigo

• Forward Ants

• Backward Ants

• Routing Tables

• Synchronization

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Scenario 4

Scenario 5

Questions?