Complex architectures grown by simple agents moving randomly on a 3D lattice and depositing bricks deterministically depending on local configurations of bricks are presented. Some of these architectures are strikingly similar to real wasp nest architectures. But most algorithms, in the space of...

Social insects provide us with a powerful metaphor to create decentralized systems of simple interacting, and often mobile, agents. The emergent collective intelligence of social insects---swarm intelligence---resides not in complex individual abilities but rather in networks of interactions...

The influence of contact rates on the efficiency (the ability to exploit a profitable environment) and flexibilty (the ability to track a changing environment) of foraging in ants is studied theoretically in the case where foraging relies on a mixture of group and mass recruitment. It is shown...

A model of division of labour in insect societies based on variable response thresholds is introduced. Response thresholds refer to likelihood of reacting to task-associated stimuli. Low threshold individuals perform tasks at a lower level of stimulus than high threshold individuals. Within...

An extremely large body of theoretical work exists on pattern formation, but vey few experimental results have confirmed the relevance of theoretical models. It is argued in this paper that the notion of agent-based pattern formation, which is introduced and examplified, can serve as a basis to...

Self-organizing maps (SOM) are unsupervised, competitive neural networks used to project high-dimensional data onto a low-dimensial space. In this article we show how SOM can be sued to draw graphs in the plane. The SOM-based approach to graph drawing, which belongs to the general class of...