A Brief Investigation of Swarm Theory and Applications

For the last half century scientists have been discovering the biological complexities of colonies of ants, termites, bees and other insects. Although these colonies are composed of individuals with limited physical and intellectual aptitude, the behavior of the system as a whole displays highly adaptive and intelligent behavior. As a result, in the last two decades, engineers have been pursuing methods to create artificial swarm intelligence and applying these concepts of complex swarming systems to traditional and novel engineering areas such as robotics, optimization algorithms, wireless networks, and military applications. In this paper, an overview of swarm theory research is provided, followed by a more in depth demonstration of swarm behaviors including swarm clustering, formation control and swarm motion.