infotaxis

Noun

 * 1) Any searching strategy in which there is sparse information, especially a strategy used by biological organisms to zigzag towards the source of an odour based on sporadic clues.
 * 2) * 2006–7, Massimo Vergassola et al., "‘Infotaxis’ as a strategy for searching without gradients", in Nature, volume 445, pages 406–409 (2007 January 25)
 * 3) * 2008, Caihua Xiong, Honghai Liu, Yongan Huang, Youlun Xiong (editors), Intelligent Robotics and Applications: First International Conference ICIRA 2008, page 1206:
 * Some literatures investigated the odor source localization by robots mimicking biologic behaviors, such as chemotaxis [ 1] and anemotaxis [ 2], or custom algorithms like fluxotaxis [ 3] and infotaxis [ 4]. The multi-robot system has more advantages than single robot in odor source localization. First, the expected search time can be decreased. Second, the multi-robot system does not easily fall into local maxima.
 * 1) * 2009, M.G. Velard et al., "Mathematical Approach to Sensory Motor Control and Memory", Chapter 5 of Paola Arena and Luca Patanè (editors), Spatial Temporal Patterns for Action-Oriented Perception in Roving Robots, Springer, ISBN 9783540884637, page 260:
 * In the framework of the so-called infotaxis algorithm any search process can be thought of as acquisition of information on source location. Thus information plays a role similar to concentration in chemotaxis. Then the infotaxis strategy locally maximizes the expected rate of information gain.