Computational Models of Collective Foraging
M.Gheorghe, M.Holcombe and P.
Kefalas
Abstract: In this paper the behaviour of a bee
colony is modelled as society of communicating agents acting in parallel
and synchronising their behaviour. Two computational approaches for defining
the agents behaviour are introduced and compared. Their common features
as well as the complementary aspects make them suitable for merging together
into a more complex model. We introduce an agent-based approach by discussing
two computational models with many similarities but with important differences,
in order to get the benefits from both and to propose some ways of combining
or complementing them. The usefulness of complementary models in the area
of biochemical systems has been already pointed out. The first approach
is based on a new rapidly growing research area called membrane or P systems
whereas the second uses a relatively new variant of the stream X-machines,
namely communicating stream X-machines. The first model has been already
used for describing various living systems and the second has proved to
be suitable for defining metabolic pathways or the behaviour of collaborating
ants. In both approaches we deal with a set of agents each with a variety
of attributes and capabilities that cooperate with each other to achieve
a number of tasks. In the second approach the asynchronous behaviour
is considered, as it is suitable to modelling biological systems. Each
agent can carry out a number of actions, while a task may require several
agents to operate in parallel or one after the other until the task is
completed. Each agent is specified by a set of rules; these rules involve
conditions determined by the environment, the inputs to the system and
by the state of the system, an internal memory device.
Keywords: P Systems, X-Machines, Modelling Honey Bee Colonies
Appeared in: Procedings of the 4th International Workshop on
Information Processing in Cells and Tissues, IPCAT2001, Lueven, Belgium,
August 2001.
Available: Hardcopy on request from the authors.
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