Abstract
Natural collective systems, such as social insects, provide us with an existence proof that remarkable feats of construction can be achieved by’ simple’ agents. Such feats appear to demand impressive control and coordination which is even more remarkable since the agents are not provided with the overall ‘blue-print’ for construction. However, as a consequence of the agents carrying out simple rules, an emergent macroscopic structure can develop. In an attempt to understand some of the underlying principles, this paper deals with pattern formations built by a swarm of mobile agents in a lattice. In particular, the morphological classification of the formed structures is provided and classes of simple, complex and non-trivially ordered structures are characterised. For these experiments, all agents start their evolution at the same site in the lattice. This investigation extends the ideas of [1] and [18] by giving agents simple rules, based on neighbourhood characteristics, which govern whether they move or become static. The final outcomes, defined by the immobility of all agents, is studied and the global static structures created are presented and discussed. Since the rules are parameterised, the paper reports on the selection of rule types to generate classes of ordered structures.
Some parts of this work were supported by Hewlett Packard Laboratories, Bristol, under the External Research Programme.
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Adamatzky, A., Holland, O., Melhuish, C. (1999). Laziness + Sensitivity + Mobility = Structure. In: Floreano, D., Nicoud, JD., Mondada, F. (eds) Advances in Artificial Life. ECAL 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1674. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48304-7_60
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48304-7_60
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