Ant Inspired Methods for Organic Computing

In recent years social insects have been a major inspiration in the design of new computational methods. This chapter describes three examples of the application of ant-inspired methods in the domain of Organic Computing. The first example illustrates implications of theoretical findings in response-threshold models that explain division of labour in ants for Organic Computing systems. The second example outlines how principles from the house-hunting behaviour of ants can be used to organise systems that are based on reconfigurable components. The final example describes how sorting mechanisms in production networks can benefit from the indirect pheromone communication found in ants.

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