ribonkit can be thought of as an experiment that attempts an interpretation of abstract networks of relationships and swarm behavior, to potentially corresponding materials organizations.
In ribonkit, agents spawn near predefined points (nodes) with another given node as a destination. Agents are being attracted to the destination, but are also attracted or repelled by other nearby agents. The result of this swarm behavior is that, depending on the proximity of others, an agent may choose not the shortest route to it's destination, but one that is commonly agreed upon with other agents.In this way, a path is created that gradually evolves as agent concentration patterns and objectives change because of it's spatial configuration.
Apart from being abstract curves in space, the traces of each agent's travel can be thought of as indications of a physical object's material concentrations in space. In this sense, the agent's "socially-enabled" goal seeking can be interpreted as a form of "economy" of material usage.
The target nodes for each agent are picked probabilistically, favoring nodes that are neighboring to the agent's source node and given the Minimum Spanning Tree (MSP) of the node set. This way, the agent-based form finding is combined with the heuristics of the MSP, yielding better results in terms of material layout.
Released under the BSD License.
