A Stochastic Approach to Shortcut Bridging in Programmable Matter
A Stochastic Approach to Shortcut Bridging in Programmable Matter
复制标题
可编程物质中捷径桥接的随机方法
DOI:
10.1007/978-3-319-66799-7_9
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发表时间:
2017
期刊:
影响因子:
--
通讯作者:
Richa, Andrea W
中科院分区:
文献类型:
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作者:
Andres Arroyo, Marta;Cannon, Sarah;Daymude, Joshua J;Randall, Dana;Richa, Andrea W
In aself-organizing particle system, an abstraction of programmable matter, simple computational elements calledparticleswith limited memory and communication self-organize to solve system-wide problems of movement, coordination, and configuration. In this paper, we consider a stochastic, distributed, local, asynchronous algorithm for “shortcut bridging”, in which particles self-assemble bridges over gaps that simultaneously balance minimizing the length and cost of the bridge. Army ants of the genusEcitonhave been observed exhibiting a similar behavior in their foraging trails, dynamically adjusting their bridges to satisfy an efficiency trade-off using local interactions. Using techniques from Markov chain analysis, we rigorously analyze our algorithm, show it achieves a near-optimal balance between the competing factors of path length and bridge cost, and prove that it exhibits a dependence on the angle of the gap being “shortcut” similar to that of the ant bridges. We also present simulation results that qualitatively compare our algorithm with the army ant bridging behavior. Our work gives a plausible explanation of how convergence to globally optimal configurations can be achieved via local interactions by simple organisms (e.g., ants) with some limited computational power and access to random bits. The proposed algorithm also demonstrates the robustness of the stochastic approach to algorithms for programmable matter, as it is a surprisingly simple extension of our previous stochastic algorithm for compression.