Implementing Swarming in Real-World Applications

Sven Brückner

Altarum Institute Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

After having enjoyed academic interest for many years, swarming approaches to solving complex problems finally start to make their way into real-world applications. But, to be a viable alternative to traditional software development approaches (even traditional AI-based multi-agent system approaches), a solid design and implementation methodology, as well as tools for specification, implementation, validation and deployment must support programmers of swarming solutions. Our Agent-Based and Complex Systems research group at Altarum has several years of experience in developing, analyzing and deploying swarming software in various application domains. In this short tutorial, I will discuss some representative application examples, offering a practitioner's view on designing and implementing swarming technologies on centralized or distributed platforms. The audience is expected to have a solid understanding of basic principles of self-organization and emergence in complex systems; actual programming experience is not required.