Includes bibliographical references and index.

Ch. 1. Introduction -- Ch. 2. Ant Foraging Behavior, Combinatorial Optimization, and Routing in Communications Network -- Ch. 3. Division of Labor and Task Allocation -- Ch. 4. Cemetery Organization, Brood Sorting, Data Analysis, and Graph Partitioning -- Ch. 5. Self-Organization and Templates: Application to Data Analysis and Graph Partitioning -- Ch. 6. Nest Building and Self-Assembling -- Ch. 7. Cooperative Transport by Insects and Robots -- Ch. 8. Epilogue

"This book provides a detailed look at models of social insect behavior and how to apply these models in the design of complex systems. The book shows how these models replace an emphasis on control, preprogramming, and centralization with designs featuring autonomy, emergence, and distributed functioning. These designs are proving immensely flexible and robust, able to adapt quickly to changing environments and to continue functioning even when individual elements fail

In particular, these designs are an exciting approach to the tremendous growth of complexity in software and information. Swarm Intelligence draws on up-to-date research from biology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, operations research, and computer graphics, and each chapter is organized around a particular biological example, which is then used to develop an algorithm, a multiagent system, or a group of robots

The book will be an invaluable resource for a broad range of disciplines."--Jacket