Swarm Intelligent Systems [Paperback]

Systems designers have learned that many agents co-operating within the system can solve very complex problems with a minimal design effort. In general, multi-agent systems that use swarm intelligence are said to be swarm intelligent systems. Today, these are mostly used as search engines and optimization tools. This volume reviews innovative methodologies of swarm intelligence, outlines the foundations of engineering swarm intelligent systems and applications, and relates experiences using the particle swarm optimisation.

Swarm intelligence is an innovative computational way to solving hard pr- lems. This discipline is inspired by the behavior of social insects such as ?sh schools and bird ?ocks and colonies of ants, termites, bees and wasps. In g- eral, this is done by mimicking the behavior of the biological creatures within their swarms and colonies. Particle swarm optimization, also commonly known as PSO, mimics the behaviorofaswarmofinsectsoraschoolof?sh.Ifoneoftheparticlediscovers a good path to food the rest of the swarm will be able to follow instantly even if they are far away in the swarm. Swarm behavior is modeled by particles in multidimensionalspacethathavetwocharacteristics:apositionandavelocity. Theseparticleswanderaroundthehyperspaceandrememberthebestposition that they have discovered. They communicate good positions to each other and adjust their own position and velocity based on these good positions. The ant colony optimization, commonly known as ACO, is a probabilistic technique for solving computational hard problems which can be reduced to ?ndingoptimalpaths.ACOisinspiredbythebehaviorofantsin?ndingshort paths from the colony nest to the food place. Ants have small brains and bad vision yet they use great search strategy. Initially, real ants wander randomly to ?nd food. They return to their colony while laying down pheromone trails. If other ants ?nd such a path, they are likely to follow the trail with some pheromone and depl³E