Planes, Trains and ant Hills

Reported April 2008

DALLAS, Texas (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Are you a worker, a drone, or a queen bee? Businesses are using models based on insect behavior to increase human production and work faster. And it's already started at the airport.

Do you ever feel like you work in an ant farm, or maybe like you're lost in the swarm? Now, financial analysts at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport are using an ant-based computer model to help you get to your destination faster!

"It's sort of like a colony of individuals trying to move through a maze with all of the other individuals present, arriving and departing and trying to do it as fast as they can," Douglas Lawson, Ph.D., a financial analysis manager at Southwest Airlines in Dallas, Texas, told Ivanhoe.

The software program uses swarm theory, or swarm intelligence -- the idea that a colony of ants works better than one alone. Each pilot acts like an ant searching for the best airport gate. "The pilot learns from his experience what's the best for him, and it turns out that that's the best solution for the airline," Dr. Lawson explains.

As a result, the "colony" of pilots always go to gates they can arrive and depart quickly. The program can even alert a pilot of plane back-ups before they happen. "We can anticipate that it's going to happen, so we'll have a gate available," Dr. Lawson says.

It's worked for planes. Now, they're using the same theory with passengers to improve ticketing and check-in. "It's basically planning by putting the virtual world out there and letting it happen, and then when we see what's going to happen, that's what we should plan to do," Dr. Lawson says…

…Getting you off the ground and to your destination with a little help from some six-legged friends. Dr. Lawson says the same principles of swarm theory can also be applied to other types of businesses.

The American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Doug Lawson, Manager of Process, Forecasting, and Simulations
Dallas, TX
(214) 792-6633
Doug.Lawson@wnco.com

American Mathematical Society
Providence, RI 02904-2294
1-800-321-4267
http://www.ams.org

Mathematical Association of America
Washington, DC 20036-1358
1-800-741-9415
http://www.maa.org

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Barry List
(443) 757-3560
barry.list@informs.org

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Tired of waiting in lines at the airport? Waiting to check-in, waiting to board, waiting to exit the plane after it's landed? One airport is getting a little help from some six-legged friends to make your traveling easier.