Swarm Intelligence - Searchers, Cleaners and Hunters

This chapter examines the concept of swarm intelligence through three examples of complex problems which are solved by a decentralized swarm of simple agents. The protocols employed by these agents are presented, as well as various analytic results for their performance and for the problems in general. The problems examined are the problem of finding patterns within physical graphs (e.g. k-cliques), the dynamic cooperative cleaners problem, and a problem concerning a swarm of UAVs (unmanned air vehicles), hunting an evading target (or targets). In addition, the work contains a discussion regarding open questions and ongoing and future research in this field.

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