Stigmergy
A mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a different agent. In that way, subsequent actions tend to reinforce and build on each other, leading to the spontaneous emergence of coherent, apparently systematic activity. 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 lack any memory, intelligence or even awareness of each other.
Applications
Scheduling problems
Job-shop scheduling problem Open-shop scheduling problem (OSP)[11][12] Permutation flow shop problem (PFSP)[13] Single machine total tardiness problem (SMTTP)[14] Single machine total weighted tardiness problem (SMTWTP)[15][16][17] Resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP)[18] Group-shop scheduling problem (GSP)[19] Single-machine total tardiness problem with sequence dependent setup times (SMTTPDST)[20] Multistage Flowshop Scheduling Problem (MFSP) with sequence dependent setup/changeover times[21] (JSP)[10]
Assignment problems
Quadratic assignment problem (QAP)[35] Generalized assignment problem (GAP)[36][37] Frequency assignment problem (FAP)[38] Redundancy allocation problem (RAP)[39] Set covering problem(SCP)[40][41] Set partition problem (SPP)[42] Weight constrained graph tree partition problem (WCGTPP)[43] Arc-weighted l-cardinality tree problem (AWlCTP)[44] Multiple knapsack problem (MKP)[45] Maximum independent set problem (MIS)[46] Classification[47] Connection-oriented network routing[48] Connectionless network routing[49][50] Data mining[47][51][52] Discounted cash flows in project scheduling[53] Distributed Information Retrieval[54][55] Grid Workflow Scheduling Problem[56] Image processing[57][58] Intelligent testing system[59] System identification[60][61] Protein Folding[62][63] Power Electronic Circuit Design[64]
Set problems