swarmFSTaxis: Borrowing a swarm communication mechanism from fireflies and slime mold

Abstract

One main motivation for studying swarm intelligence comes from observing the resilience of living systems in nature. Swarm intelligence has provided important inspirations for the engineering of technical systems. The swarmtaxis algorithm and the FSTaxis algorithm are swarm intelligent algorithms that aim to move a group of agents from a starting point to a predefined goal. The swarmtaxis algorithm bases its state transition on a voting like mechanism in which the agents count the number of “pings” they get from their surroundings. In contrast, the FSTaxis algorithm uses a scroll wave based communication mechanism inspired by slime mold and fireflies. The scroll wave based communication is expected to be more resilient than the voting like mechanism of the swarmtaxis algorithm. In this paper, we borrow the communication mechanism used in FSTaxis algorithm to improve the swarmtaxis algorithm. We will also discuss how this modified algorithm performs in comparison to the parent algorithm.