Embodied swarming based on back propagation through time shows water-crossing, hourglass and logic-gate behaviors

A flock, school, and swarm are collective behaviors that can be compared to a human consciousness or body. Through recent developments in image analysis and model simulation, it has been found that the collective behavior of animals can, as a whole, show characteristics of a single “body”. It has also been found that intrinsic noise can positively contribute to swarming and/or flocking. Motivated by field observations of soldier crabs, Mictyris guinotae, we propose a swarm model based on inherent noise and back propagation in time that mimics mutual anticipation. A swarm generated by this model is characterized by flexible, dynamical and robust behavior containing inherent turbulence. We demonstrate that the model can produce water-crossing, hourglass and logic gate behaviors, which are also found in real soldier crabs. We describe how a sense of ownership and a sense of agency of the “body” arise in our model, and we propose that the concept of a body should be verified in terms not of stability but of robustness.