Human-in-the-Loop vs. Autonomous vs. Stigmergic-Inspired Heuristic
Digital-twin experiment comparing five dispatch-governance configurations — human-only, human-in-the-loop, human-on-the-loop, central autonomy, and a decentralized stigmergic-inspired heuristic — under normal operation and simulated FMS or shovel failures.
Project: Real Autonomy in Mining — Digital-Twin Experiments
Notebook 3 of the Real Autonomy in Autonomous Haulage series. Compares human-only radio dispatch, human-in-the-loop approval, human-on-the-loop supervision, central autonomy, and a decentralized stigmergic-inspired heuristic — trucks leaving temporary environmental cost marks that other trucks read locally, with no global queue vector or central dispatch log — under a normal shift and under an FMS outage, a shovel failure, and a compound failure of both. Examines approval-latency sensitivity and control-room workload alongside throughput. An earlier version of this notebook used the term “autopoietic”; it has been dropped in favor of “stigmergic,” which more precisely describes the actual mechanism. Site and operator names are anonymized.