Efficiency of energy-consuming random walkers: Variability in energy helps

TL;DR

This paper investigates how variability in initial energy budgets of agents influences their movement efficiency and entropy production on a graph, revealing that uniform energy distribution enhances efficiency and reduces uncertainty especially with strong interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a model of energy-consuming agents with variable initial energies exploring a graph, showing that uniform energy distribution improves efficiency and reduces entropy in the presence of interactions.

Findings

Uniform energy distribution increases visited sites per energy used.

Variability in energy reduces entropy production.

Effects are more significant with stronger interactions.

Abstract

Energy considerations can significantly affect the behavior of a population of energy-consuming agents with limited energy budgets, for instance, in the movement process of people in a city. We consider a population of interacting agents with an initial energy budget walking on a graph according to an exploration and return (to home) strategy that is based on the current energy of the person. Each move reduces the available energy depending on the flow of movements and the strength of interactions, and the movement ends when an agent returns home with a negative energy. We observe that a uniform distribution of initial energy budgets results in a larger number of visited sites per consumed energy (efficiency) compared to case that all agents have the same initial energy if return to home is relevant from the beginning of the process. The uniform energy distribution also reduces the amount of uncertainties in the total travel times (entropy production) which is more pronounced when the strength of interactions and exploration play the relevant role in the movement process. That is variability in the energies can help to increase the efficiency and reduce the entropy production specially in presence of strong interactions.