Effects of Inter-agent Communication in Ant-Based Clustering Algorithms: A Case Study on Communication Policies in Swarm Systems

Communication among agents in swarm intelligent systems and more generally in multiagent systems, is crucial in order to coordinate agents’ activities so that a particular goal at the collective level is achieved. From an agent’s perspective, the problem consists in establishing communication policies that determine what, when, and how to communicate with others. In general, communication policies will depend on the nature of the problem being solved. This means that the solvability of problems by swarm intelligent systems depends, among other things, on the agents’ communication policies, and setting an incorrect set of policies into the agents may result in finding poor solutions or even in the unsolvability of problems. As a case study, this paper focus on the effects of letting agents use different communication policies in ant-based clustering algorithms. Our results show the effects of using different communication policies on the final outcome of these algorithms.