WASPS: A weight-allocated social pressure System for the emergence of agent specialization

Division of labour, or specialization, is common in many types of insect colonies. It emerges in some of these societies as a result of age polyethism, whereby the division of labour is tied to the age of the individuals. One known method that explains this is social inhibition. Individuals release pheromones when they interact with other agents. The strength of their pheromones is tied to their age. These pheromones inhibit the desire of other agents to perform the same task. Using social inhibition, individual agents can be allocated among the available tasks to be performed related to the colony. We apply a variation of this approach to the problem domain where agents can divide their time among multiple tasks. While age is not a factor, agents differ in their skill at performing each task. We create a weight-allocated social inhibition approach whereby more skilled agents inhibit the desire of less skilled agents to perform a task. We are able to see that this approach drives agents toward tasks where they have comparative advantages. This leads to an increase in the division of labour within the population. While inspired by social insects, this approach is easily applicable to agents in other domains.