I would like to ask if there existed a program, which were intended to travel (for example following some physical forces) across the planet, possibly occupying and freeing computational resources/nodes. Literally that means that some agent-based system is just regularly changing it’s location and (inevitably to some extent) configuration.
An example would be: suppose you have external sensors, and free computers – nodes – across the space; would it make sense to self-replicate agents to follow the initializers from sensors, but in such restrictive manner that the computation is only localized at where the physical business is going on.
I want to stress that this question is just for ‘theoretical’ fun, cause I cannot see any practical benefits of the restrictions mentioned, apart from the optimization of ‘outdated’ (outplaced?) agent disposal. But maybe it could be of some interest. Thank you!
EDIT: It’s obvious that a virus is fitting example, although the deletion of such agents is rarely of concern of the developers. More precisely, I’m interested in ‘travelling’ software – that is, when the count (or at least order) of the agents is kind of constant, and it’s just the whole system who travels.
I believe what you are looking for is called Mobile Agents.
BTW: I don’t believe a virus qualifies. One of the defining characteristics of a virus is that it cannot travel on its own but depends on a human user to spread it. Worms would qualify, though.