Swarm Intelligence Introduction and Applications

From the reviews:

"This book, edited by Christian Blum and Daniel Merkle, gives us the state of the art in this new and intriguing field of research, through a collection of eight chapters written by leading experts in the field. … Overall, this book is successful in presenting how naturally inspired design differs from traditional approaches … . an interesting read for researchers, to learn the latest developments in this fascinating field, and also for beginners, to get an introduction to swarm intelligence topics and applications." (Alessandro Berni, ACM Computing Reviews, June, 2009)

The laws that govern the behavior of social insect colonies continue to mesmerize researchers. Scientists have applied the behavior of social insects in new approaches to optimization and the control of robots. This field of research is now referred to as swarm intelligence, and it is characterized by a decentralized and probabilistic way of working, the key advantages being robustness and flexibility. This edited book is intended both as an overview of swarm intelligence and as a guide to the most interesting recent developments, and thus will be of interest to both novices and experienced researchers in the field. It successfully combines an overview of swarm intelligence with an up-to-date treatment of the advances in the field.