Circuit designs and fabrication of swarm-intelligence LSIs based on modeling foraging behaviors of ants

Novel functional LSIs based on swarm intelligence of ant colony have been proposed. An ant colony is a highly organized society, though individual ants themselves act only according to simple behavioral patterns. Focusing on a foraging pattern among them, the modeled function was integrated on one LSI chip. To verify the function, the fabricated LSI was applied to solve a quasi-traveling salesman problem. Simulation results indicated that a designed LSI has swarm intelligence due to pheromone communication. This work suggests the possibility of fabricating swarm intelligence LSIs with our design method, based on modeling the foraging behaviors of ants.