Swarm intelligence

Swarm intelligence (SI) is artificial intelligence based on the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems. The expression was introduced by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in 1989, in the context of cellular robotic systems^[1]. SI systems are typically made up of a population of simple agents interacting locally with one another and with their environment. Although there is no centralized control structure dictating how individual agents should behave, local interactions between such agents lead to the emergence of global behavior. Natural examples of SI include ant colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, bacterial growth, and fish schooling. The application of swarm principles to robots is called swarm robotics, while 'swarm intelligence' refers to the more general set of algorithms.

Contents 1 Example algorithms 1.1 Ant colony optimization 1.2 Particle swarm optimization 1.3 Stochastic diffusion search 2 Applications 3 References in popular culture 4 Notable Researchers 5 See also 6 References 7 External links 7.1 Swarm simulation links 7.2 Tools for studying swarm intelligence

Example algorithms

Ant colony optimization

Ant colony optimization is a class of optimization algorithms modeled on the actions of an ant colony. Artificial 'ants' - simulation agents - locate optimal solutions by moving through a parameter space representing all possible solutions. Real ants lay down pheromones directing each other to resources while exploring their environment. The simulated 'ants' similarly record their positions and the quality of their solutions, so that in later simulation iterations more ants locate better solutions. ^[2] One variation on this approach is bee algorithms, which are more analogous to the foraging patterns of the honey bee.

Particle swarm optimization

Particle swarm optimization or PSO is a global optimization algorithm for dealing with problems in which a best solution can be represented as a point or surface in an n-dimensional space. Hypotheses are plotted in this space and seeded with an initial velocity, as well as a communication channel between the particles. Particles then move through the solution space, and are evaluated according to some fitness criterion after each timestep. Over time, particles are accelerated towards those particles within their communication grouping which have better fitness values. The main advantage of such an approach over other global minimization strategies such as simulated annealing is that the large number of members that make up the particle swarm make the technique impressively resilient to the problem of local minima.

Stochastic diffusion search

Stochastic Diffusion Search or SDS is an agent based probabilistic global search and optimization technique best suited to problems where the objective function can be decomposed into multiple independent partial-functions. Each agent maintains a hypothesis which is iteratively tested by evaluating a randomly selected partial objective function parameterised by the agent's current hypothesis. In the standard version of SDS such partial function evaluations are binary resulting in each agent becoming active or inactive. Information on hypotheses is diffused across the population via inter-agent communication. Unlike the stigmergic communication used in ACO, in SDS agents communicate hypotheses via a one-to-one communication strategy analogous to the tandem running procedure observed in some species of ant. A positive feedback mechanism ensures that, over time, a population of agents stabilise around the global-best solution. SDS is both an efficient and robust search and optimisation algorithm, which has been extensively mathematically described.

Applications

Swarm Intelligence-based techniques can be used in a number of applications. The U.S. military is investigating swarm techniques for controlling unmanned vehicles. ESA is thinking about an orbital swarm for self assembly and interferometry. NASA is investigating the use of swarm technology for planetary mapping. A 1992 paper by M. Anthony Lewis and George A. Bekey discusses the possibility of using swarm intelligence to control nanobots within the body for the purpose of killing cancer tumors. Artists are using swarm technology as a means of creating complex interactive systems or simulating crowds. Tim Burton's Batman Returns was the first movie to make use of swarm technology for rendering, realistically depicting the movements of a group of penguins using the Boids system. The Lord of the Rings film trilogy made use of similar technology, known as Massive, during battle scenes. Swarm technology is particularly attractive because it is cheap, robust, and simple. The inherent intelligence of swarms has inspired many social and political philosophers, in that the collective movements of an aggregate often derive from independent decision making on the part of a single individual. A common example is how the unaided decision of a person in a crowd to start clapping will often encourage others to follow suit, culminating in widespread applause. Such knowledge, an individualist advocate might argue, should encourage individual decision making (however mundane) as an effective tool in bringing about widespread social change.

References in popular culture

Swarm intelligence-related concepts and references can be found throughout popular culture, frequently as some form of collective intelligence or group mind involving far more agents than used in current applications.

• Prey, by Michael Crichton deals with the danger of nano-robots escaping from human control and developing a swarm intelligence.
• Wyrm, a novel by Mark Fabi deals with a virus developing emergent intelligence on the Internet
• Hacker and the ants, a book by Rudy Rucker on AI ants within a virtual environment
• Ygramul, the Many - an intelligent being consisting of a swarm of many wasp-like insects, a character in the novel The Neverending Story written by Michael Ende. Ygramul is also mentioned in a scientific paper Flocks, Herds, and Schools written by Knut Hartmann (Computer Graphics and Interactive Systems Otto-von-Guericke-University of Magdeburg).
• Allucination, a novel by Isaac Asimov about an alien insect-like swarm, capable of organization and provided with a sort of swarm intelligence.
• In Olaf Stapledon's 1931 science fiction novel Last and First Men there is an episode in which Earth is invaded by a swarm intelligence from Mars of tiny individual cells that communicate with each other by radio waves and that look like green fog.

Notable Researchers

See also

• Collective intelligence
• Cellular automaton
• Differential evolution
• Emergence
• Evolutionary computation
• Flocking (behavior)
• Herd behavior
• Swarm robotics
• Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

References

• Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial Systems by Eric Bonabeau, Marco Dorigo and Guy Theraulaz. (1999) ISBN 0-19-513159-2
• Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds by Mitchel Resnick. ISBN 0-262-18162-2
• Swarm Intelligence by James Kennedy and Russell C. Eberhart. ISBN 1-55860-595-9
• The Behavioral Self-Organization of Nanorobots Using Local Rules. by Lewis, M. Anthony, and Bekey, George A. (1992) Proceedings of the 1992 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.
• Fundamentals of Computational Swarm Intelligence by Andries Engelbrecht. Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-470-09191-6
• Recent Approaches to Global Optimization Problems Through Particle Swarm Optimization", by Parsopoulos, K.E., Vrahatis, M.N., Natural Computing, 1 (2-3), pp. 235-306, 2002.
• Particle Swarm Optimization by Maurice Clerc, ISTE, ISBN 1-905209-04-5, 2006.
• Nanocomputers and Swarm Intelligence by Jean-Baptiste waldner, ISTE, ISBN 9781847040022, 2007.
• Miller, Peter (July 2007), "Swarm Theory", National Geographic Magazine, <http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0707/feature5/>

External links

• Swarmanoid Project
• LEURRE - Artificial Life Control in Mixed Societies
• Swarm Intelligence Resources
• Swarm Intelligent Systems Group at EPFL in Lausanne, a very active group in the field of Swarm Intelligent Systems
• NetLogo, a free software for multi-agent modeling, simulation, and the like, which can be used to explore the concepts of swarm intelligence.
• NeoSwarm, a predator-prey simulation using swarm techniques.
• SwarmWiki, a collaborative resource for agent-based modelling.
• WASP '03, a Workshop for Agent/Swarm Programming
• SiS, the IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium
• Swarm Intelligence and Patterns - Series of International Workshops
• Cool School, free software that demonstrates fish shoaling
• MC2 project - Machines of Collective Conscience, V.Ramos
• Ant Colony Optimization
• Swarm-Bots Project
• PARTICLE SWARM CENTRAL
• Particle Swarm Optimization with ParadisEO - A C++ object-oriented framework dedicated to the design of metaheuristics, as well as hybrid, parallel and distributed metaheuristics
• Particle Swarm Optimization toolbox An open source pso toolbox written in MATLAB. (sourceforge home for the project)
• Audience Mass Interaction System using SI techniques
• VisualBots - Freeware multi-agent simulator in Microsoft Excel - Visual Basic syntax
• CILib - GPLed computational intelligence simulation and research environment written in Java, includes PSO and ACO implementations
• RoombaDevTools.com - Use Roomba as an inexpensive robot for multi-agent experiments
• Swarm Intelligence Journal - The journal Swarm Intelligence edited by Springer-Verlag
• Swarming for Military Applications, by H. Van Dyke Parunak and colleagues, NewVectors LLC, 2007 (collection of published articles).
• Swarm Intelligence in Image Analysis, Pattern Recognition, Classification, Data Mining and Dynamic Optimization, several online works by Ramos, V. and colleagues.
• Article at IEEE Computer Society
• [1] - "From Ants to People: an Instinct to Swarm" - NY Times, 11-13-07

Swarm simulation links

• Boids - a flocking simulation produced by Craig Reynolds
• Kafka 2 Red Ant - Emergent and highly adaptive patterns using Artificial Ant Colonies over Digital Image Habitats, produced by Vitorino Ramos
• Flocking Simulator - A flocking behavior simulator in Java. Run online or free download. Includes multiple flocks, predators, and food.
• Swarm - a generic swarm simulation package
• ArtsBot - the Artistic Swarm Robots project, and two related works: On the Implicit and on the Artificial as well his Swarm Paintings.
• Swarmtech - a commercial mass audience interaction technology for real-time interaction (such as playing computer games, polling) with large groups
• glSwarm - C++ Toolbox for Swarm Simulation and Visualization

Tools for studying swarm intelligence

• Swistrack - A Tracking Tool for Multi-Unit Biological and Artificial Systems
• AgentSheets - A visual programming authoring and visualization tool to build swams based on Antiobjects