Bio-inspired Computing

Living biological systems, even though made of very simple parts, can reach a great complexity as a whole. The ant colonies are a representative example: despite the fact that every single ant seems to behave independently, the colony as a whole is highly ordered in a remarkable efficient way. The foraging behavioral studies of ants colonies had revealed that they can travel between their nests and food sources in a highly efficient way. Based on these kind of observations, the ant system introduced in Dorigo’s PhD Thesis [72] was one of the first bio-inspired models for solving optimization problems.