Skip to main content

Swarm intelligence

Swarm intelligence is the study of decentralized, self-organized systems that can move quickly in a coordinated manner. In nature, swarms occur instinctively and scientists have studied natural processes such as ant colonization, bird flocking and animal herding to learn how discrete biological agents work together with their environment to perform a common goal.
In robotics, swarm intelligence involves taking what scientists have learned from observing nature and applying the concepts to machines. For example, a robot swarm may be made up of tiny, identical devices -- each equipped with a sensor. When information collected by one robot agent is shared with the other devices in the group, it allows the individual devices to function as a united group. Robot swarms tend to be simple and agents are often equipped with sonar, radar or cameras to collect information about the environment around them.

Types of communication between swarm agents

Individual bots or agents in a swarm can communicate in a variety of ways, including:
  • Point-to-point communication: Information is passed from agent to agent directly to alert the swarm about locations, obstacles or goals.
  • Broadcast communication: One agent in the swarm sends information to the rest of the swarm at once using means like sound, light or wireless.
  • Environmental communication: A message is left by an agent within the environment the swarm is moving through, enabling the other members to interpret that information to impact their behavior. This is similar to the way insects leave a trail of chemicals behind to lead their counterparts to a specific location.

Examples of swarm intelligence

Swarm intelligence has many use cases. One application of swarm intelligence can be seen in the tiny, drone-like cameras used for dangerous search and rescue missions. When programmed to operate together as one unit, the robots are able to perform a highly sensitive global task such as searching for survivors in destroyed areas. Swarm intelligence is also used to simulate crowds in movies and interactive systems, such as virtual reality games.

Smart dust is a term used to describe a swarm of microelectromechanical robots (MEMS) that are small enough to stay suspended in air. Scientists hope that some day, smart dust can be used to detect information about environments on other planets. Characteristics that could be tracked include chemicals, vibrations, light patterns, temperatures, acceleration speeds and magnetic fields.

In information technology (IT), network engineers have modeled the idea of intent-based routing (IBN) after the way ants share information. A probabilistic routing table is used to reward and reinforce successful packet routing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ghosting

Ghosting is to cease communications without notification. The use of the word "ghost" as a verb originated in social media in reference to dating, but the term is now used by employers to describe employees and potential employees who suddenly disappear. Typically, ghosting is used to describe: Job candidates who suddenly stop responding to messages. New hires who fail to show up for their first day of work. Employees who do not show up for a shift. Employees who leave work in the middle of the day and never come back. Some analysts blame ghosting on millennial entitlement. The reasoning is that members of the millennial generation have been brought up to feel they are special -- so special, in fact, that they do not need to follow conventional rules of behavior. Other analysts, however, maintain that ghosting behavior stems from changes in the job market and the phenomenon is simply a reflection of the laws of supply and demand in a healthy jo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Data deduplication

Data deduplication -- often called intelligent compression or single-instance storage -- is a process that eliminates redundant copies of data and reduces storage overhead. Data deduplication techniques ensure that only one unique instance of data is retained on storage media, such as disk, flash or tape. Redundant data blocks are replaced with a pointer to the unique data copy. In that way, data deduplication closely aligns with incremental backup, which copies only the data that has changed since the previous backup. For example, a typical email system might contain 100 instances of the same 1 megabyte (MB) file attachment. If the email platform is backed up or archived, all 100 instances are saved, requiring 100 MB of storage space. With data deduplication, only one instance of the attachment is stored; each subsequent instance is referenced back to the one saved copy. In this example, a 100 MB storage demand drops to 1 MB. Target vs. source deduplication Data deduplica...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)

A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a computer chip that performs rapid mathematical calculations, primarily for the purpose of rendering images. A GPU may be found integrated with a central processing unit (CPU) on the same circuit, on a graphics card or in the motherboard of a personal computer or server. In the early days of computing, the CPU performed these calculations. As more graphics-intensive applications such as AutoCAD were developed; however, their demands put strain on the CPU and degraded performance. GPUs came about as a way to offload those tasks from CPUs, freeing up their processing power. NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and ARM are some of the major players in the GPU market. GPU vs. CPU A graphics processing unit is able to render images more quickly than a central processing unit because of its parallel processing architecture, which allows it to perform multiple calculations at the same time. A single CPU does not have this capability, although multi...
Post a Comment
Read more