AMORPHOUS COMPUTING AND SWARM INTELLIGENCE

A Seminar Report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement

for the award of the degree of
BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY
IN
COMPUTER SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

Submitted by

GURAJADA D RAVI SANTHOSH

(Reg.No:07U41A0578)

DADI INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY

(Approved by A.I.C.T.E & Affiliated to J.N.T.U, Kakinada)
AN ISO 9001:2008 CERTIFIED INSTITUTE
NH-5, ANAKAPALLE – 531 002
2007-2011
DADI INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
(Approved by A.I.C.T.E., New Delhi & Affiliated to JNTU, Kakinada)
AN ISO 9001:2008 CERTIFIED INSTITUTE
NH-5, ANAKAPALLE – 531 002, Visakhapatnam Dist., A.P.
Phone: 08924- 221111/221122, Fax: 232344, e-mail:info@dietakp.com

CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the Seminar work entitled
“AMORPHOUS COMPUTING AND SWARM INTELLIGENCE” is a
bonafide report being submitted by Mr. GURAJADA. D. RAVI SANTHOSH in
partial fulfillment of the curriculum in B.Tech. IV Year II Semester of Computer
Science & Engineering course during the academic year 2010 – 2011.

Seminar Incharge 1:

Seminar Incharge 2:

Seminar Incharge 3: Head of the Department

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

If words are considered as symbol of approval and tokens of knowledge, then

let the words play the heralding role of expressed by gratitude.

I wish to express my gratitude to Sri G.RAJASHEKARAM, Associate

Professor, CSE, Sri V.SRINIVAS, Associate Professor, CSE and
Sri A.VASUDEVA RAO, Associate Professor, CSE for their support and
encouragement.

I also wish to express my gratitude to Sri K.AMARENDRA, Head of the

Department, Department of Computer Science & Engineering for his support and
encouragement.

It is my pleasure to thank Prof Sri B. JAGANMOHAN RAO, Principal, for

giving me an opportunity to present Seminar Report.

I also wish to express my deep sense of gratitude to Sri DADI RATNAKAR,

Correspondent, who inspired me in every aspect and gave his valuable suggestions in
accomplishment of completing seminar work.

I would like to thank all Teaching and Non-Teaching Staff in Computer Science
& Engineering department, who encouraged and assisted me in completing this work.

I would also like to thank all my friends who have provided valuable
suggestions and inputs.

G.D.RAVI SANTHOSH
 DECLARATION

I, GURAJADA. D. RAVI SANTHOSH, submitting the Seminar

Report entitled “AMORPHOUS COMPUTING AND SWARM
INTELLIGENCE” for the partial fulfillment of B.Tech degree in Computer
Science & Engineering at Dadi Institute of Engineering and Technology,
Anakapalle, Visakhapatnam Dt. is carried out by me only and this work is not
submitted to any college / university, for the award of any degree / certificate.

G.D.RAVI SANTHOSH

(Reg.No:07U41A0578)

ABSTRACT
 Amorphous computing consists of a multitude of interacting computers with
modest computing power and memory, and modules for intercommunication. These
collections of devices are known as swarms. The desired coherent global behavior of
the computer is achieved from the local interactions between the individual agents.
The global behavior of these vast numbers of unreliable agents is resilient to a small
fraction of misbehaving agents and noisy and intimidating environment. This makes
them highly useful for sensor networks, MEMS, internet nodes, etc.

The ideas for amorphous computing have been derived from swarm behavior
of social organisms like the ants, bees and bacteria. A certain level of intelligence,
exceeding those of the individual agents, results from the swarm behavior. Swarm
Intelligence may be derived from the randomness, repulsion and unpredictability of
the agents, thereby resulting in diverse solutions to the problem. There are no known
criteria to evaluate swarm intelligence performance. Swarm Intelligence relies upon
stigmergic principles in order to solve complex problems using only simple agents.

Swarm intelligence is the emergent collective intelligence of groups of simple

autonomous agents. Here, an autonomous agent is a subsystem that interacts with its
environment, which probably consists of other agents, but acts relatively
independently from all other agents. The autonomous agent does not follow
commands from a leader, or some global plan. For example, for a bird to participate in
a flock, it only adjusts its movements to coordinate with the movements of its flock
mates, typically its neighbors that are close to it in the flock. A bird in a flock simply
tries to stay close to its neighbors, but avoid collisions with them. Each bird does not
take commands from any leader bird since there is no lead bird. Any bird can fly in
the front, center or back of the swarm.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
S.NO TITLE PAGENO

1. INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Swarm Intelligence 1

1.2. Biological Basis and Artificial Life 2

1.3 Amorphous Computing 3

1.4 Evaluation of Swarm Intelligent System 3

1.5 Stability of Swarms 4

1.5.1 Biological Models 4

1.5.2 Characterization of Stability 4

1.5.3 Overview of Stability analysis of Swarms 4

1.6 Swarm Robots 5

2. PRINCIPLES OF SWARM INTELLIGENCE 8

2.1 Overview 8

2.2 Emergent Problem Solving 9

2.3 Advantages and Disadvantages 10

2.4 Creating Swarming Systems 11

2.5 Tools for Investigating Swarm Systems 12

2.5.1 NetLogo 13

2.5.2 Repast 13

3. APPLICATAION OF SWARM INTELLIGENCE 14

3.1 Ant Colony Optimization 14

3.2 Routing 17

3.3 Collective Robotics 20

3.3.1 Autonomous nanotechnology swarms 20

3.3.2 Swarm Bots 21

 3.4 Mechatronics 22

4. AMORPHOUS COMPUTING 23

4.1 Introduction 23

4.2 The Amorphous Computing Model 25

4.3 Programming Amorphous Systems 26

4.4 Amorphous Computing Paradigms 28

4.4.1 Marker Propagation for Amorphous Particles 28

4.4.2 The Growing Point Language 29

4.4.3 Orgami Based Self Assembly 30

4.4.1 Dynamic Recruitment 31

4.4.5 Growth and Reduction 32

4.4.6 Abstraction to Continuous Space and Time 33

4.5 Primitives of Amorphous Computing 34

4.5.1 Gossip 35

4.5.2 Random Choice 35

4.5.3 Fields 36

4.5.4 Gradients 37

4.6 Supporting Infrastructures and Services 40

4.7 Lessons for Engineering 42

4.8 Future Directions 44

5. FUTURE RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY

ASSESSMENTS 46

6. CONCLUSION 48

7. REFERENCES 50