Swarm algorithms

COMP308

Swarming The Definition

aggregation of similar animals,
generally cruising in the same
direction

Termites swarm to build colonies

Birds swarm to find food
Bees swarm to reproduce

Swarming is Powerful
Swarms can achieve things that an
individual cannot

Powerful but simple

All evidence suggests:
No central control
Only simple rules for each individual
Emergent phenomena
Self-organization

Harness this Power out of Simplicity

Technical systems are getting larger
and more complex
Global control hard to define and
program
Larger systems lead to more errors

Swarm intelligence systems are:

Robust
Relatively simple (How to program a
swarm?)

Swarming Example
Bird Flocking
Boids model was proposed by
Reynolds
Boids = Bird-oids (bird like)

Only three simple rules

Collision Avoidance
Rule 1: Avoid Collision with
neighboring birds

Velocity Matching
Rule 2: Match the velocity of
neighboring birds

Flock Centering
Rule 3: Stay near neighboring birds

Define the neighborhood

Model the view of a bird
Only local knowledge, only local
interaction
Affects the swarm behavior (fish vs.
birds)

Swarming - Characteristics
Simple rules for each individual
No central control
Decentralized and hence robust

Emergent
Performs complex functions

Ant Colony Optimization - Biological

Inspiration
Inspired by foraging behavior of ants.
Ants find shortest path to food source from
nest.
Ants deposit pheromone along traveled path
which is used by other ants to follow the trail.
This kind of indirect communication via the
local environment is called stigmergy.
Has adaptability, robustness and redundancy.

Foraging behavior of Ants

2 ants start with equal probability of

going on either path.

Foraging behavior of Ants

The ant on shorter path has a shorter

to-and-fro time from its nest to the
food.

Foraging behavior of Ants

The density of pheromone on the

shorter path is higher because of 2
passes by the ant (as compared to 1
by the other).

Foraging behavior of Ants

The next ant takes the shorter route.

Foraging behavior of Ants

Over many iterations, more ants

begin using the path with higher
pheromone, thereby further
reinforcing it.

Foraging behavior of Ants

After some time, the shorter path is

almost exclusively used.

Generic ACO
Formalized into a metaheuristic.
Artificial ants build solutions to an
optimization problem and exchange
info on their quality vis--vis real
ants.
A combinatorial optimization problem
reduced to a construction graph.
Ants build partial solutions in each
iteration and deposit pheromone on
each vertex.

Ant Colony Metaheuristic

ConstructAntSolutions: Partial solution extended by

adding an edge based on stochastic and
pheromone considerations.
ApplyLocalSearch: problem-specific, used in stateof-art ACO algorithms.
UpdatePheromones: increase pheromone of good
solutions, decrease that of bad solutions
(pheromone evaporation).

Thinking is Social
Direct/Indirect communication
Social science can be used to
perform combinatorial optimization
Adaptive Culture Model contains
most of ingredients that will be used
in the more sophisticated practical
swarm algorithms
Similarity between pairs of
individuals can result in spread of
culture.

Culture Model (Axelrod,

1997)
Model of the spread of culture with social interactions
Individuals represented by symbolic strings (as in GAs), and arranged on
a 2-D grid
Probability of agent interaction increases with agents similarity
Algorithm
Randomly select an agent
Randomly select a neighbor of the agent
Probability of interaction = (# shared string values)/(string length)
If interact, then copy value on one feature of neighbors string to
the
agents string
Behavior
Preservation of different cultures in same world
Increased local harmony over time
Similarity-based interaction creates distinct boundaries

Adaptive Culture Model

(Kennedy & Eberhart, 1997)
Agents interact with each other based not on
similarity, but on performance
Behavior is not only based on fads, but on results
If neighbors sum is larger than my sum, then
interact -> 99999
If neighbors first 3 numbers are close to last 2
numbers (compared to my numbers), then interact
-> pockets of 17769 and 83193
Can solve the Traveling salesman problem
Behavior
Preservation of different cultures in the same world
Increased local harmony over time

A Hard Function
Problem is considered intractable if the amount of
time required to solve it increases at a faster-thenpolynomial rate as the size of the problem
increases.
For instance Travelling Salesman Problem (TCP)
requires finding the shortest path through a set of
nodes without passing through any node twice, and
ending at the starting point
With each additional city the number of possible
solutions grows exponentially: with N nodes there
are NN possible combinations of nodes and N!
legal tours. (NP-complete problem)