The importance of communication has been discussed in class before, but essentially it comes down to three points:

• Spacial translation of entities composed by more than one element.
• Achieving of global objectives that are otherwise not possible without communication.
• The development of complex behavior is tightly coupled to the communication process.

I have explored two different options so far. The one involving a third party seems more promising.

TP protocol (Third Party protocol): The protocol incorporates a new element called the Organizer element. This element is in charge of sensing the environment, passing input arguments but more importantly, providing a global structure for the elements to follow. This is done by changing the states of the elements based on the things the Organizer element has seen. The protocol is based on states. This means that every atom should be in one state, and such state determines what it is that the atom should be doing. The states can have external inputs, that are passed by the Organizer element. This external inputs are selected based on the sensing the Organizer element has been performing. The protocol is simple and flexible enough that every element can adapted without much changes, but at the same time provides an structure that makes different clusters of elements do either the same or separate things.

= Advantages: =

• Modularity.
• Abstraction.
• Simplification of design.

= Limitations: =

• Overlapping states.
• Not unlimited behavior.

Illustrate the protocol, give several abstract examples and one (non-trivial) concrete example using this protocol. Implement a three-stage application in which the three elements of communications are shown. The first one is based on the movement, the second one on the achieving of some sort of objective and the third one on showing that the resulting entity is indeed a complex entity. So far I have almost finished the idea for movement, and have been toying around with the idea for achieving an objective. After the first movement stage is entirely completed, I will dedicate my time to the last and more influential part of the project: showing that the entity was indeed complex.

• Make the Organizer element much more smarter:
  • Tell the ASDF elements to go to a place such that the distance traveled is partially minimized.
  • Move in a way that Organizer's event window captures as much elements as possible.
• Think up the experiment that will determine the complexity.