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Prof Dr Michael Sonnenschein
Department of Computing Science In nature, animals often have to stick together very well to find food or escape predators. We have all seen pictures of well-organised schools of fish and ant trails leading to food sources. Is there a boss who commands all the other animals? We know that this is not the case - but how do the animals organise themselves? The computer can help us answer this question. We can use it to develop traffic rules for "programmed animals", which then behave in a similar way to animals in nature when they have to solve a problem. Once we have found a traffic rule programme, we can try to have our "programmed animals" solve other difficult tasks on the computer. One such task could be, for example: Find the best route for a lorry that has to collect milk from many different farms to take it to the dairy. In the end, we actually learn from the ants... Moderator: Dr Christiane Brokmann-Nooren, Centre for Advanced Scientific Training (ZWW)
Wednesday, 14 March 2007, 4.30 to 5.30 p.m.
Audimax Hörsaalzentrum