life inspired

Justin Werfel and his group "have developed small robots that behave much like termites. The insects build impressive, metres-high structures even though they can follow only simple rules and have no knowledge of an overall plan." Full news article @ BBC news

Labels: collective intelligence, robots, Swarms

"Laurent Keller's passions go far beyond ants as he taps genomics, robots, and other approaches to answer evolutionary questions." Full profile @ Science. . See also the article:

 D.P. Mersch, A.Crespi, and L. Keller [2013]. "Tracking Individuals Shows Spatial Fidelity Is a Key Regulator of Ant Social Organization". Science 1234316.[DOI:10.1126/science.1234316]

Labels: ants, collective intelligence, robots

"Scientists in the US have built and tested robotic ants that they say behave just like a real ant colony. The robots do not resemble their insect counterparts; they are tiny cubes equipped with two watch motors to power the wheels that enable them to move. But their collective behaviour is remarkably ant-like." News @ BBC News

Labels: ants, bio-inspired computing, collective intelligence, computation, robots

"The capacity for groups to exhibit collective intelligence is an often-cited advantage of group living. Previous studies have shown that social organisms frequently benefit from pooling imperfect individual estimates. However, in principle, collective intelligence may also emerge from interactions between individuals, rather than from the enhancement of personal estimates. Here, we reveal that this emergent problem solving is the predominant mechanism by which a mobile animal group responds to complex environmental gradients. Robust collective sensing arises at the group level from individuals modulating their speed in response to local, scalar, measurements of light and through social interaction with others. This distributed sensing requires only rudimentary cognition and thus could be widespread across biological taxa, in addition to being appropriate and cost-effective for robotic agents." Fullarticle @ SCience

Labels: collective behavior, collective intelligence

"The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa uses a cell-cell communication system termed “quorum sensing” to control production of public goods, extracellular products that can be used by any community member. Not all individuals respond to quorum-sensing signals and synthesize public goods. Such social cheaters enjoy the benefits of the products secreted by cooperators. There are some P. aeruginosa cellular enzymes controlled by quorum sensing, and we show that quorum sensing–controlled expression of such private goods can put a metabolic constraint on social cheating and prevent a tragedy of the commons." Full report @ Science

Labels: bacteria, collective intelligence, cooperation, quorum sensing, tragedy of commons

"The yellow slime mold Physarum polycephalum exploring an agar plate. Courtesy of Audrey Dussutour
The slime mold Physarum polycephalum remembers where it’s been, allowing the single-cell amoeboid to more efficiently navigate its environment. The key [is] a kind of externalized spatial memory system, based on the trail of translucent slime it leaves in its wake, that allows the organism to recognize and avoid already-explored areas." Full news article @ The Scientist Magazine. Original article:

Reid et al [2012] "Slime mold uses an externalized spatial 'memory' to navigate in complex environments." PNAS. 10.1073/pnas.1215037109

Labels: collective behavior, collective intelligence, slime mold, stigmergy

A special issue worth looking into: ScienceDirect - Information Sciences : Nature-inspired collective intelligence in theory and practice

Labels: collective intelligence

Labels: collective behavior, collective intelligence

"By studying army ants — as well as birds, fish, locusts and other swarming animals — Dr. Couzin and his colleagues are starting to discover simple rules that allow swarms to work so well. Those rules allow thousands of relatively simple animals to form a collective brain able to make decisions and move like a single organism." Full Story @ New York Times

Labels: collective behavior, collective intelligence, Swarms

From Mike Conover:
"Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria "talk" to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry -- and our understanding of ourselves." See follow-up interview. TED Blog: The secret, social lives of bacteria: Exclusive interview with Bonnie Bassler

Labels: bacteria, collective intelligence, communication, semiotics