Traffic patterns and flow characteristics in an ant trail model

  • Authors:

  • Alexander John;Andreas Schadschneider;Debashish Chowdhury;Katsuhiro Nishinari

  • Affiliations:

  • Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln, Germany;Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln, Germany;Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India;Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Faculty of Engineering, University of Tokyo, Japan

  • Venue:
  • ANTS'06 Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Ant Colony Optimization and Swarm Intelligence
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

We have constructed a minimal cellular automaton model for simulating traffic on preexisting ant trails. Uni- as well as bidirectional trails are investigated and characteristic patterns in the distribution of workers on the trail are identified. Some of these patterns have already been observed empirically. They give rise to unusual flow characteristics which are also discussed. The question of possible functions of the observed traffic patterns and the resulting flow characteristics will be treated for simplified biological scenarios.