Swarm Intelligence - Definition and Overview

The expression "swarm intelligence" was introduced by Beni & Wang in 1989, in the context of cellular robotic systems. In these systems many simple agents occupy one- or two-dimensional environments to generate patterns and self-organize through nearest-neighbor interactions. Bonabeau, Dorigo and Theraulaz, in their "Swarm Intelligence" book, published in 1999 by Oxford University Press, extend Beni et al.'s definition to include any attempt to design algorithms or distributed problem-solving devices inspired by the collective behavior of social insect colonies and other animal societies. Note that their definition only marginally covers work on cellular robotic systems, which does not borrow a lot from social insect behavior. Recent successful strands of Swarm Intelligence include Ant Colony Optimization (www.aco-metaheuristic.org), Swarm Robotics (www.swarm-bots.org), and Ant-based clustering.