A Survey of Environments and Mechanisms for Human-Human Stigmergy

Stigmergy (the coordination of agents through signs they make and sense in a shared environment) was originally articulated in the study of social insects. Its basic processes are much simpler than those usually used to model human-level cognition. Thus it is an attractive way to coordinate agents in engineered environments such as robotics or information processing. Stigmergic coordination is not limited to insects. Humans regularly use environmentallymediated signals to coordinate their activities. This paper develops a schema for analyzing stigmergy among humans, discusses examples (some using a computational environment and others antedating digital computation), and suggests how the use of such mechanisms may be extended. 1 Executive Summary Human-Human Stigmergy is pervasive. A wide range of pre-computer social systems fit the pattern of stigmergic coordination, and have provided a rich set of metaphors on which a diverse set of computer-enabled systems for enabling human stigmer...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: E4MAS
• Authors: H. Van Dyke Parunak
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, E4MAS 2005, Human-human Stigmergy, Stigmergic Coordination, Summary Human-Human Stigmergy