Provides a detailed look at models of social insect behaviour and how these can be applied in the design of complex systems, drawing upon a complementary blend of biology and computer science, including artificial intelligence, robotics, operations research, informationdisplay, and computer graphics.
1. Introduction; 2. Ant Foraging Behavior, Combinatorial Optimization, and Routing in Communications Networks; 3. Division of Labor and Task Allocation; 4. Cemetery Organization, Brood Sorting, Data Analysis, and Graph Partitioning; 5. Self-Organization and Templates: Application to Data Analysis and Graph Partitioning; 6. Nest Building and Self-Assembling; 7. Cooperative Transport by Insects and Robots; 8. Epilogue