Abstract
Collective behavior, and swarm formation in particular, has been studied from several perspectives within a large variety of fields, ranging from biology to physics. In this work, we apply Projective Simulation to model each individual as an artificial learning agent that interacts with its neighbors and surroundings in order to make decisions and learn from them. Within a reinforcement learning framework, we discuss one-dimensional learning scenarios where agents need to get to food resources to be rewarded. We observe how different types of collective motion emerge depending on the distance the agents need to travel to reach the resources. For instance, strongly aligned swarms emerge when the food source is placed far away from the region where agents are situated initially. In addition, we study the properties of the individual trajectories that occur within the different types of emergent collective dynamics. Agents trained to find distant resources exhibit individual trajectories that are in most cases best fit by composite correlated random walks with features that resemble Lévy walks. This composite motion emerges from the collective behavior developed under the specific foraging selection pressures. On the other hand, agents trained to reach nearby resources predominantly exhibit Brownian trajectories.
Highlights
Collective behavior is a common but intriguing phenomenon in nature
We study how the dynamics that the agents develop in order to reach the food source change as the distance dF increases
We focus on two extreme scenarios: one where the resource is within the initial region —agents are initialized within the first 2VR positions of the world, and the other one where the resource is at a much larger distance
Summary
Collective behavior is a common but intriguing phenomenon in nature. Species as diverse as locusts, and some families of fish or birds exhibit different types of collective motion in very different environments and situations. The general properties of swarms, schools and flocks have been widely studied [1] for a review), the emergence of global, coordinated motion from the individual actions is still a subject of study.
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