Three Foraging Models Comprised of Ants with Different Pheromone Sensitivities

摘要

An ant colony shows collective behavior through signal patterns formed by individual ants communicating among themselves who behave according to local information. First, in this paper I devise a method for designing ant colony models that describes both the formation mechanism of signal patterns and the regulation mechanism of task allocation. Next, using the above method, I design three foraging models (trail, attraction and desensitization), by modifying a simple foraging model repeatedly, changing ant sensitivity to recruit pheromone, to improve foraging by regulating allocation of ants to sub-tasks. Out of them, the desensitization model shows the best foraging efficiency as a result of both proper allocation among subtasks and stable behavior.