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Swarm Intelligence. What is swarm intelligence?

Swarm Intelligence

Have you ever wondered at the perfectly synchronized flight of a flock of birds? It looks like a well-choreographed dance in which the birds veer to the right or left at unison. It almost looks like they have a leader that coordinates them and they play a “follow-the –leader” game. Before reading further take a moment and watch the following video: How is this possible? 1.Avoid bumping into other individuals. 2. 3.Move toward the average position of those closest to you. These can be more succinctly described as: Avoidance (separation),Alignment and Attraction (cohesion).

These simple local interactions between the birds in flight can generate amazing patterns of which none of the member is aware. We can find the same phenomenon at locust, bees and ant colonies. Reynolds' boids are small isosceles triangles. 1) If you are about to crash into another bird, turn around. 2) If you are far away from other birds, head towards the nearest bird. Swarm intelligence. Swarming Up A Storm: Why Animals School And Flock.

Hide captionA school of Blue Tang fish swimming together off the Caribbean island of Bonaire.

Swarming Up A Storm: Why Animals School And Flock

It has long been assumed that the schooling behavior of fish evolved in part to protect animals from being attacked by predators. David J. Phillip/AP By tricking live fish into attacking computer-generated "prey," scientists have learned that animals like birds and fish may indeed have evolved to swarm together to protect themselves from the threat of predators. "Effectively, what we're doing here is we're getting predatory fish to play a video game," says Iain Couzin, who studies collective animal behavior at Princeton University.

It has long been assumed that the schooling behavior of fish and the flocking behavior of birds evolved in part because it helps protect individuals from being attacked by predators, says Couzin. That's because it's been hard to come up with experiments that could test how different kinds of group behavior affect predation risk. Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images. Swarm intelligence. Swarm intelligence is the discipline that deals with natural and artificial systems composed of many individuals that coordinate using decentralized control and self-organization.

Swarm intelligence

In particular, the discipline focuses on the collective behaviors that result from the local interactions of the individuals with each other and with their environment. Examples of systems studied by swarm intelligence are colonies of ants and termites, schools of fish, flocks of birds, herds of land animals. Some human artifacts also fall into the domain of swarm intelligence, notably some multi-robot systems, and also certain computer programs that are written to tackle optimization and data analysis problems. Taxonomy of Swarm Intelligence Swarm intelligence has a marked multidisciplinary character since systems with the above mentioned characteristics can be observed in a variety of domains. Natural vs. Scientific vs. Natural/Scientific: Foraging Behavior of Ants. Surprising Swarms. Have a look at this video: It shows a flock of starlings coming into roost in Rome.

Surprising Swarms

It could also be called a swarm of starlings. A swarm is a group of many animals in the air or on the ground. Starlings stay together in large groups for safety in numbers. In a large group, an individual starling has less chance of being eaten by a predator.

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How Does Astaxanthin Improve Brain Function? Bioluminescense. Ecosystems. Sharks. Water. Education Resources. Climate/Weather. Powerpoints. Classification.