Emergence of Specialised Collective Behaviors in Evolving Heterogeneous Swarms

Fuda van Diggelen*, Matteo de Carlo, Nicolas Cambier, Eliseo Ferrante, Guszti Eiben

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book / Report / Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Natural groups of animals, such as swarms of social insects, exhibit astonishing degrees of task specialization, useful for solving complex tasks and for survival. This is supported by phenotypic plasticity: individuals sharing the same genotype that is expressed differently for different classes of individuals, each specializing in one task. In this work, we evolve a swarm of simulated robots with phenotypic plasticity to study the emergence of specialized collective behavior during an emergent perception task. Phenotypic plasticity is realized in the form of heterogeneity of behavior by dividing the genotype into two components, with a different neural network controller associated to each component. The whole genotype, which expresses the behavior of the whole group through the two components, is subject to evolution with a single fitness function. We analyze the obtained behaviors and use the insights provided by these results to design an online regulatory mechanism. Our experiments show four main findings: 1) Heterogeneity improves both robustness and scalability; 2) The sub-groups evolve distinct emergent behaviors. 3) The effectiveness of the whole swarm depends on the interaction between the two sub-groups, leading to a more robust performance than with singular sub-group behavior. 4) The online regulatory mechanism improves overall performance and scalability.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationParallel Problem Solving from Nature – PPSN XVIII
Subtitle of host publication18th International Conference, PPSN 2024, Hagenberg, Austria, September 14–18, 2024, Proceedings, Part II
EditorsMichael Affenzeller, Stephan M. Winkler, Anna V. Kononova, Thomas Bäck, Heike Trautmann, Tea Tušar, Penousal Machado
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages53-69
Number of pages17
Volume2
ISBN (Electronic)9783031700682
ISBN (Print)9783031700675
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024
Event18th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, PPSN 2024 - Hagenberg, Austria
Duration: 14 Sept 202418 Sept 2024

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
PublisherSpringer
Volume15149 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349
NamePPSN: International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature
PublisherSpringer

Conference

Conference18th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, PPSN 2024
Country/TerritoryAustria
CityHagenberg
Period14/09/2418/09/24

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.

Keywords

  • Evolutionary robotics
  • Heterogeneous swarm
  • Swarm robotics

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