An Agent-Based Model for Simulating Electrified Social Insects Traffic Behavior
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2021
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Abstract
The main aim of this work was to show that it is possible to simulate the motion of social insects electrified. The social insects usually prefer to move in a narrow path known as trail to search for food, etc. They can communicate each other by a chemical. To follow the others in a common path, the forager leaves this chemical on the path. The chemical affects as a “virtual” source creating a force that attracts other ones. This force is a non-Newtonian and violates the third law of the motion [1]. On the other hand, insects can be electrified some various ways, thus can carry electric charges. As consequence, they can electrically affect others by producing an electric force that repels others during the motion. In agent-based models, it is assumed that the moving objects are agents or particles. In this study, insects are represented by particles being affected by certain two distinct forces. First, the attractive force that is created from the chemical and second, the repulsive force sourced from the electrostatic repulsion between particles. Particles are assumed to move in a path by “decision-making” according to the resultant(net) force represented by Fn in the text. The study yields interesting results. Results showed that, for a limited region of the density of particles, the flux J of the motion was found out to be independent of the change of the global density ρ when the repulsive force was taken as a particular type. This is reasonably related to “the Quenched Disorder” phenomenon in the traffic. © 2021, Sociedade Brasileira de Física.