Stigemetoden

Stigemetoden is a term used in some Norwegian-language sources to refer to a class of coordination methods based on stigmergy, or to describe stigmergy-inspired approaches in general. In this usage, the method emphasizes indirect communication among autonomous agents through modifications left in the environment, rather than direct, centralized control or explicit messaging.

Stigmergy describes how agents interact by altering a shared medium. Agents perform actions that leave traces—such as marks, signals, or digital equivalents—that other agents can sense and respond to. Over time, these traces guide subsequent actions, and simple local rules can produce complex, collective behavior. Traces may decay or be reinforced, enabling adaptive, self-organizing processes without a central planner.

The concept originated in biology to explain coordination in social insects. The term stigmergy was coined by French biologist Pierre-Paul Grassé in 1959, drawing on observations of termite and ant colonies. Since then, stigmergy has been abstracted into computational and engineering frameworks, with notable extensions in artificial intelligence and optimization.

Applications of stigmergy-inspired methods include swarm robotics, distributed optimization, and network routing. Algorithms influenced by stigmetoden often rely on simple agents reacting to environmental traces, enabling scalable problem solving in dynamic or uncertain environments. In practice, these methods aim for robustness, parallelism, and adaptability, while challenges include tuning trace intensities, decay rates, and convergence behavior.

See also: stigmergy, swarm intelligence, ant colony optimization, swarm robotics.