Groups of interacting agents in a confined system, whether cars on a highway or insects in a tunnel, often generate clogs that can persist for long durations. For tasks that demand a steady flow of agents, with each performing a repetitive task, those clogs hinder the collective goal. When a traffic jam happens, it’s not just detrimental to each driver; rather, the total number of cars traversing the road at any given time is reduced. Road engineers put a lot of thought into infrastructure design to keep traffic flowing as smoothly as possible. Insects have instinctive strategies for accomplishing the same goal.
With GPS and mobile communications technology, humans can see other cars on the roads and make informed decisions about avoiding congested areas or venturing out in the first place. But for agents operating in other confined systems, like ants working in a nest or micromachines carrying drugs in...
