Collective decision-making is a characteristic of societies ranging from ants to humans. The ant Temnothorax albipennis is known to use quorum sensing to collectively decide on a new home; emigration to a new nest site occurs when the number of ants favouring the new site becomes quorate. There are several possible mechanisms by which ant colonies can select the best nest site among alternative...

We study many-particle diffusion in 2D colloidal suspensions with full hydrodynamic interactions through a novel mesoscopic simulation technique. We focus on the behaviour of the effective scaled tracer and collective-diffusion coefficients DT(rho)/D0 and DC(rho)/D0 respectively, where D0 is the single-particle diffusion coefficient, as a function of the density of the colloids rho. At low Schm...

We analyse two well-established historic trader scenarios from the area of comparative economics known as the Maghribi Traders Coalition and the contemporary Genoese traders, which contrast the otherwise comparable individualistic Genoese and collective North-African trader societies by the institutions they used to sustain cooperative behaviour. We employ agent-based modelling to test a previo...

Inspired by the Ising model, we introduce a gene regulatory network that induces a phase transition that coordinates robustly the behaviour of cell ensembles. The building blocks of the design are the so-called toggle switch interfaced with two quorum sensing modules, Las and Lux. We show that as a function of the transport rate of signalling molecules across the cell membrane the population un...

This paper addresses the question to what extent a process involving multiple agents that shows some form of collective intelligence can be interpreted as a single agent. The question is answered by formal analysis. It is shown for an example process how it can be conceptualised formalised and simulated in two different manners: from a single agent (or cognitive) and from a multi-agent (or soci...

We introduce the concept of cognitive design pattern to provide a design methodology for distributed multi-agent systems. A cognitive design pattern is a reusable solution to tackle problems requiring cognitive abilities (e.g., decision-making, attention, categorisation). It provides theoretical models and design guidelines to define the individual control rules in order to obtain a desired beh...

In this paper the question is addressed to what extent the collective processes in a multi-agent society can be interpreted as single agent processes. This question is answered by formal analysis and simulation. It is shown for an example process how it can be conceptualised, formalised and simulated in two different manners: from a single agent (or cognitive) and from a multi-agent (or social)...

The main intrest of this study was to investigate the phenomenon of collective intelligence in an anonymous virtual environment developed for this purpose. In particular, we were interested in studing how dividing a fixed community in different group size, which, in different phases of the experiment, works to solve tasks of different complexity, influences the social problem solving process. T...

We investigate the emergence of self-organised trails in collective motion of social organisms by means of an agent-based model. We present numerical evidences that an increase in the efficiency of navigation between the target areas, in dependence of the colony size, exists. Moreover, the shift, from the maladaptive to the adaptive behaviour, can be quantitative characterised, identifying and ...

We describe the characteristics and behaviour of emergent patterns we have found in a simple predator-prey simulation model. We have extensively simulated a “flatland” populated with microscopically detailed individual animals. Animals’ behaviours are rule-based and follow a predator-prey schema based on a small number of adjustable parameters. We have searched the model parameter space and fou...