Programming with Stigmergy: Using Swarms for Construction

Social insects build extremely complex structures despite their limited perception and the absence of a global control system. Many of the structures built by termites can be construed as emergent phenomena driven by each worker’s reaction to local pheremone levels. This work extrapolates from termite building to a system for specifying swarm activity. In the system, swarms are homogeneous and composed of simple, memory-less that perceive only their immediate environment. The swarm’s activity is coordinated by virtual pheremone concentrations. The rules governing the agents’ reactions can be designed to produce swarms that build complex, com-