{"id":431,"date":"2010-10-26T17:22:09","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T00:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattfife.net\/wordpress\/?p=431"},"modified":"2012-08-12T19:20:23","modified_gmt":"2012-08-13T02:20:23","slug":"bees-can-solve-the-traveling-salesman-problems-why-cant-our-supercomputers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=431","title":{"rendered":"Bees can solve the traveling salesman problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/robots.net\/article\/3066.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.qmul.ac.uk\/media\/news\/items\/se\/images\/item38864.jpg?resize=270%2C230\" height=\"230\" width=\"270\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Researchers at Queen Mary, University of London and Royal Holloway have discovered that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.qmul.ac.uk\/media\/news\/items\/se\/38864.html\">bees learn to fly the shortest possible route<\/a> between flowers even if they discover the flowers in a different order.  This <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Travelling_salesman_problem\">&#8216;Travelling Salesman Problem&#8217;<\/a> often takes supercomputers days to solve, but Bees are now the first animals proven to do it. Computer-controlled artificial flowers were used to track the bee&#8217;s path and found they quickly learned the shortest route. Since a bee&#8217;s brain is only the size of a pinhead, researchers are hoping to identify the neural circuitry required and use that understanding to construct their own systems that rival the computational power of existing machines<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fascinating.  A humbling reminder that despite the fact we consider computers near godlike in their abilities &#8211; there are solutions even the brightest minds can&#8217;t duplicate with a Turning-based machine.  Or even reproduce <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Halting_problem\" target=\"_blank\">at all<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Has often made me wonder if some day we&#8217;ll have a quantum or other non-Turing &#8216;co-processor&#8217; with our current machines that is based on an architecture more suited to solving these <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Np_complete#Solving_NP-complete_problems\" target=\"_blank\">types<\/a> of difficult problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at Queen Mary, University of London and Royal Holloway have discovered that bees learn to fly the shortest possible route between flowers even if they discover the flowers in a different order. This &#8216;Travelling Salesman Problem&#8217; often takes supercomputers days to solve, but Bees are now the first animals proven to do it. Computer-controlled artificial flowers were used to track the bee&#8217;s path and found they quickly learned the shortest route. Since a bee&#8217;s brain is only the size&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=431\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technicalprogramming"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-6X","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":585,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions\/585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}