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INTRODUCTION
Nature is a great place to go for inspiration when you want to see systems that
are robust and have been around for millions of years. Nature provides the inspiration
for swarm intelligence. Look at the emergent behavior observed in ants, termites,
bees and others. We see very simple creatures, performing complex behavior as
a group Consider
the case of ant colony working together . The
behaviour of ants has long fascinated scientists. These insects have the strength
to carry food up to seven times their own body weight, and set up amazingly complex
colonies, with social 'castes' in which every member has a role. In fact,
ants are not only fascinating just to entomologists looking at them under the
microscope. In recent years, computer scientists have been paying great attention
to the way in which a colony of ants can solve complex problems; in particular,
how it finds the shortest route to a food source. Each
insect in a colony seemed to have its own agenda, and yet the group as a whole
appeared to be highly organized. This organization was not achieved under supervision,
but through interaction among individuals. This was most apparent in the way in
which ants travel to and from a food source. Ants
form and maintain a line to their food source by laying a trail of pheromone,
i.e. a chemical to which other members of the same species are very sensitive.
They deposit a certain amount of pheromone while walking, and each ant prefers
to follow a direction rich in pheromone. This enables the ant colony to quickly
find the shortest route. The first ants to return should normally be those on
the shortest route, so this will be the first to be doubly marked by pheromone
(once in each direction). Thus other ants will be more attracted to this route
than to longer ones not yet doubly marked, which means it will become even more
strongly marked with pheromone. Thus,
the shortest route is doubly marked, and more ants will follow it. This simple
model finds the shortest route between the nest and a food source. Allowing the
pheromone trail to "evaporate" (as in nature) provides the ants a mechanism
to explore for alternate food sources when the first is depleting and for alternate
routes should the first become blocked. Studying this uncanny skill has enabled
researchers to create software agents capable of solving complex IT problems.This
forms the basic idea behind SWARM INTELLIGENCE
CHARATERISTICS
OF SWARM"
Distributed, no central control or data source; " No (explicit) model
of the environment; " Perception of environment, I.e. sensing; "
Ability to change environment TRAVELING
SALES ANT
In the traveling salesman problem,a person must find the shortest route by which
to vcisit a given number of cities,each exactly once.The classic problem is devilishly
difficult:for just 15 cities there are billions of route possiblities.
Recently researchers have begun to experiment with antlike agents to derive a
solution.The approach relies on the artificial ants laying and following equivalent
of pheromone trails
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