Summary
2011 International Symposium on Nonlinear Theory and Its Applications
2011
Session Number:A2L-B
Session:
Number:A2L-B4
Problem-Size Scalability of Amoeba-based Neurocomputer for Traveling Salesman Problem
Liping Zhu, Masashi Aono, Song-Ju Kim, Masahiko Hara,
pp.108-111
Publication Date:2011/9/4
Online ISSN:2188-5079
Summary:
A single-celled amoeboid organism, the true slime mold Physarum polycephalum, exhibits rich spatiotemporal oscillatory dynamics and sophisticated parallel problem solving capabilities. To investigate impacts on the accuracy and speed of the parallel problem solving as a result of the increase of the number of processing units, we use our previously demonstrated experimental system that leads the organism to search for a solution to the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). In this study, increasing the problem size N of TSP from 4 to 8, we show the following results; 1) the accuracy to reach a good solution was robustly maintained independently of N; and 2) the time required to reach a solution and the amount of information that the organism acquired from the optical feedback did not grow drastically. These results hint that the search ability of our system is enhanced by "economical" dynamics of the organism to find a high quality solution at lower exploration cost.