How efficient are creatures with time-shuffled behaviors?

Abstract

The task of the creatures in the “creatures’ exploration problem” is to visit all empty cells in an environment with a minimum number of steps. We have analyzed this multi agent problem with time-shuffled algorithms (behaviors) in the cellular automata model. Ten different “uniform” (non-time-shuffled) algorithms with good performance from former investigations were used alternating in time. We designed three time-shuffling types differing in the way how the algorithms are interweaved. New metrics were defined for such a multi agent system, like the absolute and relative efficiency. The efficiency relates the work of an agent system to the work of a reference system. A reference system is such a system that can solve the problem with the lowest number of creatures with uniform or time-shuffled algorithms. Some time-shuffled systems reached high efficiency rates, but the most efficient system was a uniform one with 32 creatures. Among the most efficient successful systems the uniform ones are dominant. Shuffling algorithms resulted in better success rates for one creature. But this is not always the case for more than one creature.