Trail traffic flow prediction by contact frequency among individual ants |
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Authors: | Hideyasu Sasaki Ho-fung Leung |
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Affiliation: | 1. Keio Research Institute at SFC, Keio University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan 2. 6-4-10 Wakakusa, Kusatsu, Shiga, 525-0045, Japan 3. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, the New Territories, Hong Kong S.A.R., P.R. China
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Abstract: | Ants build a trail that leads to a new location when they move their colony. The trail’s traffic flows smoothly, regardless of the density on the trail. To the best of our knowledge, such a phenomenon has been reported only for ant species. The trail’s capacity is known as trail traffic flow. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic model of trail traffic flow, which overcomes some inadequacies of the kinetic model previously proposed in the literature. Our model answers a question unsolved by the previous model, namely, how many worker ants form such a density-independent trail. We focus on ants’ responses to mutual contacts that involve individuals in trail formation. We propose a model in which contact frequency predicts the number of worker ants that form a trail. We verify that our model’s estimates match the empirical data that ant experts reported in the literature. In modeling and evaluation, we discuss an intelligent ant species, the house-hunting ant Temnothorax albipennis, which is popular among the ant experts. |
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