AbstractHoney bees are social insects that forage for flower nectar cooperatively. When an individual forager discovers a flower patch rich in nectar, it returns to the hive and performs a “dance” in the vicinity of other bees that consists of movements communicating the direction and distance to the nectar source. The bees that receive this information then fly to the location of the nectar to retrieve it, thus cooperatively exploiting the environment. This project simulates this behavior in a cellular automaton using the Morphognosis model. The model features hierarchical spatial and temporal contexts that output motor responses from sensory inputs. Given a set of bee foraging and dancing exemplars, and exposing only the external input-output of these behaviors to the Morphognosis learning algorithm, a hive of artificial bees can be generated that forage as their biological counterparts do.
Morphognostic Honey Bees Communicating Nectar Location Through Dance Movements
