Deterministic ants in labirynth -- information gained by map sharing

TL;DR

This paper investigates how multiple deterministic ant robots explore a labyrinth, share information upon meeting, and how their knowledge acquisition scales with the number of ants and time, using numerical simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a deterministic exploration algorithm for ant robots in a labyrinth and analyzes information sharing and scaling behavior through numerical results.

Findings

Information sharing accelerates exploration

Scaling relations describe knowledge growth over time

Number of ants influences exploration efficiency

Abstract

A few of ant robots are dropped to a labirynth, formed by a square lattice with a small number of nodes removed. Ants move according to a deterministic algorithm designed to explore all corridors. Each ant remembers the shape of corridors which she has visited. Once two ants met, they share the information acquired. We evaluate how the time of getting a complete information by an ant depends on the number of ants, and how the length known by an ant depends on time. Numerical results are presented in the form of scaling relations.