“Taking Traffic Control Lessons — From Ants”

One of our “Next Generation Transportation” participants came across this in Wired.  Of course, had to share.

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“They never get stuck in traffic,” said Audrey Dussutour, a University of Sydney entomologist. “We should use their rules. I’ve been working with ants for eight years, and have never seen a traffic jam — and I’ve tried.” …

In the latest findings, published in the February issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology, Dussutour’s team found that ants leaving the colony automatically gave right-of-way to those returning with food. Of the returning ants, some were empty-mandibled — but rather than passing their leaf-carrying, slow-moving brethren, they gathered in clusters and moved behind them.

This seemingly counterintuitive strategy — when stuck behind a slow-moving truck, are you content to slow down? — actually saved them time. …

The results are an example of how individual behaviors optimized to serve a collective good can ultimately benefit the individual as well. If humans would let a network take the wheel, these principles might manage our own congested thoroughfares.

“We essentially would have to hand over control of the vehicle to a collectively intelligent system that would move all vehicles from their source to destination,” said Marcus Randall, a Bond University software mathematician. People would be reluctant, he said, but “accidents would be virtually non-existent and travel would become much more efficient. …

“One dominating factor in human traffic is egoism,” said University of Zoln traffic flow theorist Andreas Schadschneider.

“Drivers optimize their own travel time, without taking much care about others. This leads to phantom traffic jams which occur without any obvious reason. Ants, on the other hand, are not egoistic.”

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More here.