The Split Trail Problem

The ant in Figure 1 has following pheromone trail after exiting the nest. When it reaches its current position, it has to choose the next best path to take.

To choose the next best grid square, the ant will look at the 8 surrounding squares and take the one with the highest pheromone trail.

The trails a, b and c are a third of the strength of trail X. This causes the ant to choose grid square 2, because its pheromone strength is 3 times as strong. The means the ant will move backwards.

This results in another instance of the dancing ant problem. When it moves back to square 2 its next best position is again the position in figure 1. And this continues.

Even by selecting the best grid square randomly with a bias towards the highest this problem still seems to occur to much for the ants to follow the trails properly.

Last Modified: Dec 2nd, 2006 at 16:17:36

Created: Dec 2nd, 2006 at 15:59:01