Social insects
build extremely complex
structures despite their limited perception and the absence of a
global control system. Many of the structures built by termites can
be construed as emergent phenomena driven by each worker's reaction
to local pheremone levels. This work extrapolates from termite
building to a system for specifying swarm activity. In the system,
swarms are homogeneous and composed of simple, memory-less that
perceive only their immediate environment. The swarm's activity is
coordinated by virtual pheremone concentrations. The rules
governing the agents'
reactions can be designed to
produce swarms that build complex, composable structures.