For example, one pair of students programmed a simulation of termites collaboratively gathering wood chips into piles. One reason is that people seem to have difficulty reasoning about interaction and collaboration. People tend to underrate the capabilities of decentralized collaboration. It is too dangerous and costly to send human astronauts to this planet, so we decide to send a spaceship with several thousand small robots. Once the spaceship lands on the planet, we want the robots to explore for gold and bring the gold back to the spaceship.
Ants generally solve the problem in a very decentralized way.
They begin by searching randomly. When an ant finds food, it carries the food back to the nest, emitting a chemical pheromone as it walks. If another ant happens to detect this pheromone trail, it follows the trail to the food source, then reinforces the trail on its way back to the nest. The students developed a variety of interesting and creative strategies. But there were certain consistencies in the student responses.