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Swarm Intelligence

Posted by michael on from the alfred-hitchcock dept.

elamdaly writes "Eric Bonabeau, Ph.D, a keynote speaker at the upcoming Emerging Technology conference, is a leader in the field of swarm intelligence and has focused on applying these concepts to real world problems such as factory scheduling and telecommunications routing. The concept itself is borrowed from nature; in this interview, that's where the conversation begins, with ants and other social insects. Dr. Bonabeau takes us from his childhood nightmares of carnivorous wasps to applying the theories of swarm intelligence to solving real problems in the business world."

7 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Mythical man month by MxTxL · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I got to thinking about this real quick and, as i'm too lazy to read the actual interview and it's probably addressed there, what are the effects of diminishing returns?

    The 'mythical man month' basically says that one programmer (or other worker) can produce more in one month than two workers each working half a month... who can do more than three workers all in 1/3 of a month. And further that just throwing more people at a problem doesn't really do much past a certain point. For some problems, it might be the case that one guy working for a month can do more than ten guys working for the same period of time.

    How does swarm behavior overcome all of this great stuff?

    I presume that it must be an essential part of the deal that the problem must be something very trivial for there to be great effects by swarming.

    1. Re:Mythical man month by Jerf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Context, context, context.

      Programming right now is an activity that requires huge amounts of context to produce good output. Just being distrubed can cost big. Splitting the context in half will cost, it will not benefit.

      Programming is an extreme problem, though. Some things, like "getting from here to there" requires much less context. You routinely set out on journeys with incrediblely incomplete amounts of knowlege regarding the conditions of your path. Sometimes you end up taking alternate routes because of obstructions. Compared to the amount of context maintained while programming, you set off to your destinations almost blind.

      Only some problems can be "swarmed", mostly where there's some form of reinforcement that can be used. "Getting from here to there" is a great, obvious example of that, with the phermone trails reinforcement. On the other hand, the whole point of programming and its great attaction to me is the desire to never do the same thing twice, almost the exact opposite kind of problem. ("The number one sin of programming is code duplication." - me.)

    2. Re:Mythical man month by cmburns69 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The analogy of 10 men working each for 1/10 of a month is not accurate. If you have 10 men working each for 1/3 of a month, the overall time (not parallel) it takes will be less than that of 1 man for 1 month.

      This only works if each swarming entity is not important (or expensive) by itself.

      An online Starcraft RPG? Only at

      --
      Online Starcraft RPG? At
      Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
  2. Erm, is this thinking new? by tarquin_fim_bim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What is open source after all? Don't think the system would quite work a business model, but for like minded volunteers it's already up & running.

  3. I can't belive I'm quoting a shirt... by superspoon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Never underestimate the power of stupid people on large groups"

    --


    YarrRrr
  4. Been there Done That by Herkum01 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This happens all the time in the business world. Any attempt at a new thought, in particular meetings, will be met with vile and a scorn, right before they they beat you to death with the conference room phone. It is a sort of a mindless action that is drilled into people in corporations in much the same manner as wasps or bees. Attack anything that threatens the stability of the nest!

    So I guess this just proves, "The Future is already here!"

  5. Re:Proverbs 6:6 by L7_ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Its not that people haven't been trying to emulate the behavior of insect swarms such as ants, beetles or bees for thousands of years its just that, like most current problems in science, the technology is just now matching up to the complexity of the problem.


    The mathematical techniques are just being formed to handle these types of problems, based mainly on the numerical research that has been done in recent years.


    So, I would say its more interesting that modern science is now capable to actually be wise from considering the ants ways, rather than someone conjecturing about being wise by thinking about the ants ways.



    P.S. Proverbs havent been around for 'thousands of years', more like 16 to 17 hundred.