Authors:
Alejandro Avilés del Moral
1
;
Munehiro Takimoto
1
and
Yasushi Kambayashi
2
Affiliations:
1
Tokyo University of Science, Japan
;
2
Nippon Institute of Technology, Japan
Keyword(s):
Ant Colony Optimization, Global Positioning System, Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, Mobile Agents, Multiagent Systems.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Agents
;
Artificial Intelligence
;
Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems
;
Distributed and Mobile Software Systems
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Mobile Agents
;
Multi-Agent Systems
;
Self Organizing Systems
;
Software Engineering
;
Symbolic Systems
Abstract:
This paper proposes a distributed multi-agent framework for discovering and optimizing evacuation routes on demand. We name it Evacuation Routing using Ant Colony Optimization over Mobile Ad hoc Networks (ERAM). Taking advantage of ant colony optimization (ACO) on mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) composed of smartphones with geo-location capabilities, ERAM aims for adaptability and layout independence, relying exclusively on crowd’s knowledge during mass evacuations. Such knowledge is inserted into the system: actively, by users’ indication of having reached safe areas on their smartphones; and passively, by smartphones tracking their own movement. In the framework, agents migrate through nodes of a MANET towards safe areas based on an indirect communication mechanism called stigmergy, which is a behaviour that social insects show. Once an agent finds such an area, it traces its path backwardly collecting geographical information of intermediate nodes for composing an evacuation route
. During the backward travel, agents lay pheromone down while they migrate back based on the ACO algorithm, strengthening quasi-optimal physical routes, and hence guiding succeeding agents. This scenario is analogous to data-packet routing on Internet or resource discovery on P2P networks, except it routes people through physical environments towards safe areas instead.
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