Stigmergy
Stigmergy (/ˈstɪɡmərdʒi/ STIG-mər-jee) is a mechanism of indirect coordination, through the environment, between agents or actions.[1] The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an individual action stimulates the performance of a succeeding action by the same or different agent. Agents that respond to traces in the environment receive positive fitness benefits, reinforcing the likelihood of these behaviors becoming fixed within a population over time.[2]
Stigmergy is a form of self-organization. It produces complex, seemingly intelligent structures, without need for any planning, control, or even direct communication between the agents. As such it supports efficient collaboration between extremely simple agents, who may lack memory or individual awareness of each other.[1][3]
History
The term "stigmergy" was introduced by French biologist Pierre-Paul Grassé in 1959 to refer to termite behavior. He defined it as: "Stimulation of workers by the performance they have achieved." It is derived from the Greek words στίγμα stigma "mark, sign" and ἔργον ergon "work, action", and captures the notion that an agent’s actions leave signs in the environment, signs that it and other agents sense and that determine and incite their subsequent actions.[4][5]
Later on, a distinction was made between the stigmergic phenomenon, which is specific to the guidance of additional work, and the more general, non-work specific incitation, for which the term sematectonic communication was coined[6] by E. O. Wilson, from the Greek words σῆμα sema "sign, token", and τέκτων tecton "craftsman, builder": "There is a need for a more general, somewhat less clumsy expression to denote the evocation of any form of behavior or physiological change by the evidences of work performed by other animals, including the special case of the guidance of additional work."
Stigmergy is now one of the key concepts in the field of swarm intelligence.[7]
Stigmergic behavior in non-human organisms
Stigmergy was first observed in
In computer science, this general method has been applied in a variety of techniques called
Other
Stigmergy has been observed in
Analysis of human behavior
Stigmergy studied in
On the
In addition the concept of stigmergy has also been used to describe how cooperative work such as building design may be integrated. Designing a large contemporary building involves a large and diverse network of actors (e.g. architects, building engineers, static engineers, building services engineers). Their distributed activities may be partly integrated through practices of stigmergy.[23][24][25]
Analysis of human social movements
The rise of
Stigmergic society
Some at the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement in 2014 were quoted recommending stigmergy as a way forward.[31][32]
See also
- Ant mill
- Biosemiotics
- Extended mind thesis
- Path dependence
- Spontaneous order
- Watchmaker analogy
- r/place
References
- ^ S2CID 23140721.
- S2CID 40532871.
- S2CID 16431291.
- S2CID 35422936.
- S2CID 27679536.
- ^ Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, E.O. Wilson, 1975/2000, p.186
- ^ Parunak, H. v D. (2003). "Making swarming happen." In Proc. of Conf. on Swarming and Network Enabled Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR), McLean, Virginia, USA, January 2003.
- ISBN 978-3-540-74089-6.
- ISSN 2194-3206.
- S2CID 53774438.
- S2CID 67855787.
- ^ Beckers, R., Holland, O. E. and Deneubourg, J.L. "From local actions to global tasks: Stigmergy and collective robotics." Archived 2013-11-04 at the Wayback Machine Artificial life IV. 1994, p.181-189.
- doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0688-82. Archived from the original(PDF) on 26 May 2012. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
- .
- ^ Ranjbar-Sahraei, B., Weiss G., and Nakisaee, A. (2012). A Multi-Robot Coverage Approach based on Stigmergic Communication. In Proc. of the 10th German Conference on Multiagent System Technologies, Vol. 7598, pp. 126-138.
- ^ Giovanna Castellano, Mario G.C.A.Cimino, et al. A multi-agent system for enabling collaborative situation awareness via position-based stigmergy and neuro-fuzzy learning, Neurocomputing, Vol. 135 (2014) pp. 86-97
- ^ Mario G.C.A. Cimino, Federico Galatolo, Alessandro Lazzeri, Gigliola Vaglini. Spikiness Assessment of Term Occurrences in Microblogs: an Approach Based on Computational Stigmergy, ICPRAM 2017
- ^ Mark Elliott on stigmergy, citizen wikis, collaborative environments. YouTube. 26 August 2009. Archived from the original on 2021-12-11.
- ISBN 978-0-226-19230-7.
- ^ a b Infoworld: A conversation with Steve Burbeck about multicellular computing Archived 2008-12-11 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Heylighen F. (2007). Why is Open Access Development so Successful? Stigmergic organization and the economics of information Archived 2008-10-02 at the Wayback Machine, in: B. Lutterbeck, M. Baerwolff & R. A. Gehring (eds.), Open Source Jahrbuch 2007, Lehmanns Media, 2007, p. 165-180.
- ISBN 0-9715661-6-X, Oakton, Virginia, November 2007
- ^ Christensen, L. R. (2007). Practices of stigmergy in architectural work. In Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM Conference on Conference on Supporting Group Work (Sanibel Island, Florida, USA, November 04–07, 2007). GROUP 2007. ACM, New York, NY, 11-20.
- ^ Christensen, L. R. (2008). The Logic of Practices of Stigmergy: Representational Artifacts in Architectural Design. In Proceedings of the 2008 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (San Diego, CA, USA, November 8–12, 2008). CSCW '08. ACM, New York, NY, 559-568.
- S2CID 2902658.
- doi:10.5204/mcj.2599.
- ^ Marsh, Heather (2013-06-08). Binding Chaos: Mass collaboration on a global scale. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. .
- ^ a b Heather Marsh (2012-01-09). "A proposal for governance: Stigmergy". Archived from the original on 2016-01-17. Retrieved 2016-01-13.
- ^ Heather Marsh (2011-12-24). "A proposal for governance in the post 2011 world". Archived from the original on 2013-09-01. Retrieved 2013-07-15.
- ^ Heather Marsh (2012-02-22). "A proposal for governance: Concentric User Groups and Epistemic Communities". Archived from the original on 2013-08-31. Retrieved 2013-07-15.
- ^ Leavenworth, Stuart (2014-11-19). "Hong Kong protesters, facing divisions, wait for police to act". McClatchy. Archived from the original on 2018-04-25. Retrieved 2018-04-24.
carrying a sign board for the "Stigmergy Society." The term refers to the social organization of anthills, in which coordination isn't achieved by a formal leadership structure but by independent action among those with shared goals.
- ^ "Occupy Central - Part 1". www.zonaeuropa.com. Retrieved 2016-01-13.
Further reading
- Bonabeau, Eric, ed. (Spring 1999). "Special issue on Stigmergy". Artificial Life. 5 (2): 95–96. S2CID 35422936.
- Doyle, Margery J.; Marsh, Leslie (2013). "Special issue: Stigmergy in the Human Domain". Cognitive Systems Research. 21: 1–74. S2CID 40609378.
- Elliott, Mark (May 2006). "Stigmergic Collaboration: The Evolution of Group Work". M/C Journal. 9 (2). ISSN 1441-2616.
- Heylighen, Francis (2016). "Stigmergy as a universal coordination mechanism I: Definition and components". Cognitive Systems Research. 38: 4–13. S2CID 16431291.
- Heylighen, Francis (2016). "Stigmergy as a universal coordination mechanism II: Varieties and evolution". Cognitive Systems Research. 38: 50–59. S2CID 15095421.