Physarum-Inspired Multi-Commodity Flow Dynamics
This addresses network optimization problems for applications like transportation or communication systems, representing an incremental extension of Physarum-inspired methods to a more complex scenario.
The paper tackles the network design problem by formulating it as constructing a network to support multi-commodity flow efficiently, introducing a Physarum-inspired dynamics that minimizes an objective combining network and routing costs, with simulations showing it constructs efficient networks.
In wet-lab experiments, the slime mold Physarum polycephalum has demonstrated its ability to solve shortest path problems and to design efficient networks. For the shortest path problem, a mathematical model for the evolution of the slime is available and it has been shown in computer experiments and through mathematical analysis that the dynamics solves the shortest path problem. In this paper, we introduce a dynamics for the network design problem. We formulate network design as the problem of constructing a network that efficiently supports a multi-commodity flow problem. We investigate the dynamics in computer simulations and analytically. The simulations show that the dynamics is able to construct efficient and elegant networks. In the theoretical part we show that the dynamics minimizes an objective combining the cost of the network and the cost of routing the demands through the network. We also give alternative characterization of the optimum solution.