Swarming technology 10/26

Today’s blog will focus on the articles that discuss using ants and other insects as models for solving complex problems in the digital world. Scientists are using ants as models because colonial insects have the unique ability to solve daily problems they experience by working together toward a common goal. This kind of colonial symbiosis is rare anywhere in the world, and even more rare is the animal’s ability to cooperate with each other as a colony. One way that these insects are used is the problem of the “traveling salesman”, or the shortest route between a large numbers of points. Ants are studied for this problem because ants seem like they can systematically find the shortest route between points in nature using their pheromone trails they leave behind. Another way that the ants are being used is they are being studied so that engineers can build small robots to do sophisticated tasks. This is useful because it is low cost and is an easy way to solve more difficult problems. Instead of building a large complex robot that is still out of our technological reach, many small bots can be made that we are able to build. Another way to use ants is they are being used in digital networks by leaving a “digital pheromone”, or bits of information, on the web to leave a chain that can be remapped and rerouted. Another way that the ants could be used is we could use ants to complete complex digital tasks by incorporating many people that are good at a certain aspect of the problem and together have the whole group work in their strengths to move toward a common goal. Another way that insects can be used to solve complex problems is by using swarm theories to build complex defense networks that are almost impenetrable by hackers or digital thieves. Instead of traditionally using one central server for things, using many small servers that are highly regulated and complex may make it harder to retrieve information or to accomplish many more tasks. If we used many small servers it may also be easier and less chaotic if something goes down on the server to fix the problem than if someone is trying to fix a large complex server.