Animat Swarms and Spatial Emergence Phenomena

Swarms of microscopic organisms are well known in nature and have been shown to exhibit many unexpected collective behaviours. We model a swarm of artificial animats in a model where microscopic predator prey behaviours give rise to emergent macroscopic spatial phenomena. Animats with very simple local rules can be shown to exhibit a collective swarm response that can potentially be linked to some macroscopic task. We investigate microscopic instructions for a swarm of animats to affect the build up or removal of scale in arterial flow systems. We describe various ways to implement swarming in the model and report on some preliminary results showing how blockage material can be transported by animats and the emergent spatial patterns that emerge.