Re: [Swarm-Support] Grouping agents in an on demand fashion

[Paul Johnson]

Kyle Hanson wrote:
> What I was hoping for was an "on demand" swarm model. For example, if a user changes their profile information it regroups them, but it doesnt bother grouping users that havent been active on the site. 
>
>
>   

In the Swarm simulation system libraries--which are different from the 
term "Swarm Intelligence"--we use the term "dynamic scheduling" to refer 
to the kind of "on demand" triggering of actions that you describe.  In 
the swarmapps-objc, the most notable demonstration of that concept is 
mousetrap.  Several years ago I became very curious to understand the 
details of this and i wrote up some little stand alone demonstrations.

http://pj.freefaculty.org/SwarmFaq/WorkingExampleCode/objc/DynamicScheduling.txt
http://pj.freefaculty.org/SwarmFaq/WorkingExampleCode/objc/pjrepeater.m

http://pj.freefaculty.org/SwarmFaq/WorkingExampleCode/objc/pjrepeater2.m

http://pj.freefaculty.org/SwarmFaq/WorkingExampleCode/objc/pjrepeater3.m

http://pj.freefaculty.org/SwarmFaq/WorkingExampleCode/objc/pjrepeater4.m

http://pj.freefaculty.org/SwarmFaq/WorkingExampleCode/objc/pjrepeater5.m

http://pj.freefaculty.org/SwarmFaq/WorkingExampleCode/objc/pjrepeater6.m

I think you will find the following.  Conceptually speaking, using 
dynamic scheduling is good.  However, it is not necessarily "faster" 
than the ordinary "loop through all of the agents" approach.  The speed 
difference reflects whether or not you have optimally organized your 
"loop through all of the agents", actually. 

The most "conceptually meaningful" scheduling approach might be to have 
a Schedule object for each agent, but that makes the whole model run 
more slowly because of the need to interleave the actions of all the 
schedules.

On the other hand, it is "almost as conceptually good" to throw actions 
onto the schedule at various times and then let the single schedule run 
through those accumulated actions.  Things will happen in the right order.

pj

--
Paul E. Johnson                       email: address@hidden
Professor, Political Science          http://pj.freefaculty.org
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