Abstract for Swarm Intelligence

SI is the property of a system whereby the collective behaviors of agents interacting locally with
their environment cause coherent functional global patterns to emerge. SI provides a basis with
which it is possible to explore distributed problem solving without centralized control or the
provision of a global model. One of the cores tenets of SI work is that often a decentralized,
bottom-up approach to controlling a system is much more effective than traditional, centralized
approach.
Groups performing tasks effectively by using only a small set of rules for individual behaviour is
called swarm intelligence. Swarm Intelligence is a property of systems of non-intelligent agents
exhibiting collectively intelligent behaviour. In Swarm Intelligence, two individuals interact
indirectly when one of them modifies the environment and the other responds to the new
environment at a later time. For years scientists have been studying about insects like ants, bees,
termites etc.
The most amazing thing about social insect colonies is that theres no individual in charge. For
example consider the case of ants. But the way social insects form highways and other amazing
structures such as bridges, chains, nests and can perform complex tasks is very different: they
self-organize through direct and indirect interactions.
Swarm describes behavior of an aggregate of animals of similar size and body orientation, often
moving en masse or migrating in the same direction. Swarming is a general term that can be
applied to any animal that swarms. The term is applied particularly to insects, but can also be
applied to birds, fish, various microorganisms such as bacteria, and people. The term flocking is
usually used to refer to swarming behavior in birds, while the terms shoaling or schooling are
used to refer to swarming behavior in fish. The swarm size is a major parameter of a swarm.

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.