Research project "Virtual Nervous Systems" (ARC program)

Swarm intelligence is the discipline that deals with natural and artificial systems composed of many individuals that coordinate using decentralised control and self-organisation. Such systems have great potential for parallel, flexible, and scalable operation. Unfortunately, the lack of centralised control is paradoxically exactly what creates the main issue of current swarm intelligence research: how to manage a swarm, ensuring that it is robust and trusted.
In this project, researchers will investigate how self-organisation and centralised forms of control can coexist in swarm intelligence systems. They intend to study how self-organisation can be used to generate centralised control structures, adapted to particular swarm operation situations and that can be dissolved once no longer useful. Researchers will compare the interactions inside large groups of humans, on one side, and robots, on the other side, to see how they coordinate their actions and make centralised control structures emerge. The main goal of the project will be to understand what are the minimal requirements that allow the emergence of ad hoc forms of centralised organisation through self-organising processes.

Spokesperson

Marco Dorigo
IRIDIA
Brussels School of Engineering

Partner

Axel Cleeremans
CRCN
Faculty of Psychology and Education