Towards a common understanding of the digital pheromone

In this paper we critically evaluate the research on digital pheromones to date and conclude that the wide variance in the understanding of what a digitised pheromone is serves to defocus research. We examine the classical pheromone-use algorithm, the ant algorithm and conclude that as such it has not been proven feasible for practical use. By examining the failure of proposed applications we derive an application where pheromones appear to offer added value. On critically evaluating an initial implementation we note its success but point out that lacking the understanding of biological pheromones serves to hinder research in digital pheromones in general and bio-inspired robotics in particular. We propose a set of rules and urge researchers to critically evaluate them