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Bio-Inspired Computing and Networking
Some of these insect models have been taken into simulation or even into robotics.
Cazangi and colleagues
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simulated an autonomous navigation system based on
pheromone trails used by ants. Specifically, simulated robots tried to avoid collisions
while capturing targets. The availability of “positive” (attractive) and “negative”
(dangerous) pheromone trails, based on the trails left by ants to recruit or warn
conspecifics, improved almost every measure, including increasing target captures
and decreasing the mean distance traveled. This documents the utility of social
information when it is available.
One study that translated insect behavior into robot behavior using distributed
problem-solving rules modeled a