| Biologists studied the behavior of social insects for a long time. It is interesting how these tiny insects can find the shortest path for instance between two locations without any knowledge about distance, linearity, etc. After millions of years of evolution all these species have developed incredible solutions for a wide range of problems. Some social systems in nature can present an intelligent collective behavior although they are composed by simple individuals with limited capabilities. The intelligent solutions to problems naturally emerge from the self-organization and indirect communication of these individuals.
The word stigmergy was named about fifty years ago by Pierre-Paul Grasse, a biologist studying ants and termites. Self-Organization in social insects often requires direct and indirect interactions among insects. Indirect interactions occur between two individuals when one of them modifies the environment and the other responds to the new environment at a later time. Such an interaction is an example of stigmergy. A famous example of stigmergy is the pheromonal communication among ants, whereby ants engaging in certain activities leave a chemical trail which is then followed by their colleagues.
This book deals with the application of stigmergy for a variety of optimization problems. Addressing the various issues of stigmergic optimization using different intelligent approaches is the novelty of this edited volume. This Volume comprises 12 Chapters including an introductory chapter giving the fundamental definitions, inspirations and some research challenges. Chapters were selected on the basis of fundamental ideas/concepts rather than the thoroughness of techniques deployed. The twelve Chapters are organized as follows. |
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Throughout this book we’ll be developing a set of solutions (in the form of custom controls most of the time) designed to tackle the more common needs of Web Application development. These range from simple and self-contained controls, like the Spinner control developed in Chapter 2, to more advanced and complex solutions, such as the... |
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