A swarm basically means a group. We all must have
observed swarms (groups or colonies or flocks or schools) of bees, ants,
fishes, and birds. What is so special about them? It is the collective
intelligent behaviour they show.
This unique behaviour is known as swarm behaviour or
swarming! And it arises due to interaction between the individuals and between
an individual and its environment. There is no central authority. For example,
in a colony of ants, the queen never gives orders to any of the members.
A single ant is not a genius and it acts randomly but a
swarm of ants indeed is! Swarm Intelligence (SI) is based on swarming behaviour
of insects and animals where principles apply to inanimate entities. It is an
artificial intelligence (AI) technique where individuals (boids) follow a
de-centralized approach.
It is the collective behaviour of self-organized systems.
The term Swarm Intelligence was introduced by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in
1989. Random interactions among the individuals lead to the emergence of
intelligent global behaviour, unknown to individuals.
Many models have been put forth to explain swarm
behaviour. The following two models are the most popular algorithms adopted and
accepted.
1. Ant-colony
optimization (ACO) was proposed by Marco Dorigo in 1992. As the name suggests
it aims to derive solutions to problems by imitating the behaviour of 2 natural
ants.
Natural ants are
able to find the shortest path between their food and nests with the help of
certain chemical secretions known as pheromones (responsible for interactions
among individuals).
Pheromone trail is followed by ants and the shortest path
discovered! Parallel to this, artificial ants (computer based simulation
agents) locate optimal solutions by moving through a space representing all
possible solutions.
2. Particle-swarm optimization (PSO), proposed by Kennedy
and Eberhart in 1995, is based on simulating the behaviour of birds.
Individuals here learn from their previous experiences and those around them and
hence tend to find the best solution.
The most revolutionary application of swarm intelligence
is in robotics. This is specifically known as swarm robotics. It involves the
study of robotic systems consisting of a large group of relatively small and
simple robots which interact and cooperate with each other in order to jointly
solve tasks that are outside their own individual capabilities.
Swarms are most resistant to failures. The largest swarm
so far created is the 1024 robot kilobot swarm. Contradictory to traditional
robotics where the focus was on developing highly capable, expensive and few
robots; swarm robotics emphasizes on having a large number of relatively
inexpensive robots.
Swarm robots have various characteristics. They are:
1. Parallelism – Different robots can perform different
tasks at the same time.
2. Flexibility – Addition or removal of an individual
does not influence the structure and the efficiency of the swarm.
3. Fault tolerance – When a robot breaks down another one
can take over. No single point-of-failure.
4. Robustness – Less reliance on a single individual.
5. Cost effective – Cheaper to build than the complex
robots.
6. De-centralized approach – No ruling authority.
7. Scalability – Add more robots, and get more work done.
Swarm robots can communicate with each other through camera and coloured LEDs.
That is how a chain is formed and the chains aggregate to
form a cluster, something known as clumping. Swarm robots have been used in:
1. Military – The U.S. Naval forces have tested a swarm
of autonomous boats that can steer and take offensive actions by themselves.
Swarms can be used to form autonomous armies of unmanned aerial drones,
self-navigating cruise missiles for warfare.
2. Space research and exploration – Swarm robots can be
used for mining on the Moon, Mars and even asteroids for establishment of
settlements and for exploring unfound things about our solar system.
3. Medicine – Micro-nano systems are used for treatment
and monitoring of diseases (like diabetes). Nanobots could swarm to source of
cancerous tumors and release medicine without damaging healthy tissues; they
could also be effective in atherosclerosis.
4. For rescue operations after a natural calamity like
earthquake in a place out of reach of the humans.
5. Crowd simulation – Artists use swarm technology as a
means of creating complex interactive systems. For example, to show the
movement of a swarm of bats in Batman Returns and battle scenes in The Lord of
the Rings film trilogy. Stanley and Stella in: Breaking the Ice was the first
movie to make use of swarm technology for realistically depicting the movements
of groups of fish and birds using the Boids system.
Robots are going to be an integral part of the future.
Swarm robotics will play a big role in the future, possibly changing robotics
as we know it. Dumb parts, properly connected into a swarm, yield smart results.
Thus, swarm technology is very important for us than it seems.
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