Herself’s Artificial Intelligence

If you have ever observed ants marching in and out of a nest, you might have been reminded of a highway buzzing with traffic. To Iain D. Couzin, such a comparison is a cruel insult — to the ants.Americans spend a 3.7 billion hours a year in congested traffic. But you will never see ants stuck in gridlock.

Army ants, which Dr. Couzin has spent much time observing in Panama, are particularly good at moving in swarms. If they have to travel over a depression in the ground, they erect bridges so that they can proceed as quickly as possible. [ read more From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm (NYT)]

One of the more interesting things discovered is that swarm behavior can change rapidly to with one individual’s change. Many of the rules discovered by I Couzin are common to many species and resemble laws of the physical universe.

See also:
Particle Swarms
Ant Algorithms

More information:
Slashdot, The rules of the swarm
Iain Couzin home page
Collective memory and spatial sorting in animal groups
Self organization and collective behavior in vertebrates