Southwest cures traffic woes, with ants

The National Geographic recently printed an article explaining how Southwest Airlines used ant colonies to resolve chronic traffic problems at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix.

In order to better manage the mess of planes, runways and gates at the airport, Southwest observed ‘swarm behavior’ in ant colonies.

Although they work in large groups, ants, and other insects which swarm, have developed extremely efficient group behavior mechanisms, perfected over 140 million years of evolution.

In swarms, each individual follows a set of simple rules when interacting with other individuals. The entire interaction of all the ants contributes to what then becomes an extremely organized, efficient, effective and economical collective organism.

Southwest mimicked the way ants search for direction from their colony to build a computer program which searches for open gates for arriving planes. When the system was implemented, the airline achieved much faster rates of gate arrivals and planes spent less time idling on the tarmac.

www.southwest.com