Introduction to Part X

Abstract

The present chapter deals with biological and artificial systems constituted by groups of autonomous, interacting agents having a common task or goal. This includes collective behaviour, as it is found in animal aggregations and insect societies, as well as cooperative behaviour. The former concerns groups of animals where each individual responds in the same way to given stimuli. Individuals may directly communicate with each other by exchanging specific information (e.g. the use of pheromones in ant foraging behaviour) or interact indirectly by simply using the presence and effects of the behaviour of other, as additional environmental cues, triggering specific behaviours. The latter involves more strategic planning of action. Here, several individuals have to cooperate in order to realise a common task which could not be realised by only one individual (see examples below). In both cases, however, the group behaviour has to be considered as an emergent property of the interactions between agents and their environment, which is qualitatively different from the individual behaviour, and obeys different rules. The following collection of articles aims at a better understanding of intelligent processes (e.g., collective selection and goal achieving systems) that are self-organised by the behaviour of numerous agents linked together by simple interactions, giving rise to new solutions of a higher level of complexity.