Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #11433
To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: John Bachman bachman@anatek.mv.com
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 06:25:03 -0500
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: Was lobster, now bees
At 04:23 PM 3/6/00 , you wrote:
>
>>If you want to it be more able in an environment, give it more sensors, ants for example have touch sensors,
>>light, temperature, and it can tell if its legs are stuck, which is basically the goal for most of our walkers and such, but I am curious how insects can know where to go back to like if a pile of sugar is on the ground, he will tell his little ant friends and they will go to it, same with bees. I haven't seen my photovores telling each other where the sun is lately
>>
>>Steve
>>
>>Ants leave a scent trail which allows the others to find the route to the sugar. Bees though, are really neat, they do a little dance.... When he (they're all he's) gets back to the hive, the individual bee that knows where the good flowers are does a dance. The dance consists of circles and body shakes that relate to the direction of the sun and the number of left turns and right turns relative to the sun. All the drones that are watching this dance are usually able to find the flowers that the original drone is dancing about.
>>
>>Pretty cool, but we're a long way from getting any of our bots to do that.
>>
>>
>>Les
True, but perhaps an achievable goal. If one of the bot functions is to find food and it succeeds, is it not inconcievable for it to communicate the location to other bots? Once a frame of reference is established (no trivial task) then instructions appropriate to the bots movement mechanisms could be communicated from one to another. This makes the group more efficient as some bots could be searchers while others could be gatherers - much like the bees.
By the way, all worker bees are females, not males. The drones are only good for one thing and provide no other service. That is why the workers toss them out every fall to conserve food for the winter. They can make new drones any time they want.
But the bee analogy is a good model for a society of bots. Each worker bee is genetically identical to the others but has different task assignments throughout it's lifetime. The group cooperates with one another and shares resources. This results in very efficient society. Hmmmm.
John
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