Artificial Immune Systems

7.4 Summary

Although natural immune systems are complex and consist of a huge number of individual components, they can be considered as a distributed, selforganising system which operates in a dynamic environment. The mechanisms of natural immune systems, including their ability to distinguish between self and non-self states, and their ability to maintain a memory of previous invaders, provide a rich metaphorical inspiration for the design of patternrecognition and optimisation algorithms. In this chapter we have discussed how two of these metaphors, the negative selection process for T cells, and the clonal selection and expansion of B cells, can be applied to create a classification system and an optimisation algorithm, respectively.