Programmed animals in the computer
Programmed animals in the computer
Learning to organise from ants: "Programmed animals" in the computer
Prof. Dr Michael Sonnenschein
Department of Computing Science 
In nature, animals often have to stick together very closely to find food or escape predators. We’re all familiar with the images of superbly organised schools of fish and trails of ants leading to food sources. Is there a leader who commands all the other animals? We know that’s not the case – but how, then, do the animals organise themselves? Computers can help us answer this question. With their help, we can develop traffic rules for ‘programmed animals’, which then behave in a similar way to animals in the wild when they have to solve a problem. Once we’ve found a traffic rule programme, we can try to get our ‘programmed animals’ to solve other difficult tasks on the computer. One such task might be, for example: find the best route for a lorry that has to collect milk from many different farms and take it to the dairy. So, in the end, we do actually learn from the ants... Moderator: Dr Christiane Brokmann-Nooren, Centre for Advanced Scientific Training (ZWW)
Wednesday, 14 March 2007, 4.30 pm to 5.30 pm
Audimax, Lecture Centre