Stigmergy

Presented by Francis Heylighen

Concept

........... --- stimulate ---> ...........

MEDIUM ------------------ AGENTS

........... <--- action ------ ...........

Discussion issues

• Lifetime
• Evaporation
  • defined evaporation for ant foraging
  • no evaporation for SO encylopedia
• Qualitative versus quantitative stigmergy
  • links in Wikipedia to non-exisiting articles
• Number of agents
• Local versus global memory
• Shortcomings of stigmergy
  • Medium: You need a medium that is sufficiently stable (cannot use air as medium)
  • Medium: Medium must be accessible by all agents
  • Asynchronous nature (can also be an advantage)
  • Reliability
• A list of applications would be needed