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We are using the map of Leuven as a graph roadmodel. We aim to develop a system using exploration ants, as well as feasibility ants that roam around the map to propagate knowledge about the local environment. Exploration ants are sent out by vehicles and report back when they have found a favourable path to follow to pick up packages, while feasibility ants would be sent out by parcels and randomly roam around to notify vehicles of their existence. Ideally, these ants are not visible on the map while roaming around and would not be bound by regular time constraints (faster movement than other vehicles).

Is there some kind of support for a delegate MAS system like this, and if not, what would be the best approach to implement it?

Jonah Bellemans
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This question has been answered here.

As for your second question: Instead of adding ants in a RoadModel, you could view the ants as messages that contain some extra data (such as the path they they were sent along) and send them throughout the graph using a CommModel. This way, they are invisible and non-colliding.

armin
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  • How would a message keep track of the path it followed? Would it work to make messages ticklisteners and add their location to a queue every tick? More specifically, how do we find out the location of the message in the RoadModel? – Jonah Bellemans May 27 '18 at 09:00
  • You would need to set up an infrastructure of `CommUser`s, by e.g. putting a `CommUser` at at every node in the graph. If you create ants that implement `MessageContents` you can pass them around using the `CommUser`s. You can keep track of the path an ant followed by giving it a list and appending to it the position of every `CommUser` the ant went through. – armin May 29 '18 at 13:37