In my quest for knowledge and understanding, I have become so fascinated by Swarm Intelligence(SI). SI is a computational intelligence technique involving the study of collective behavior in decentralized, self-organized systems. These systems are made up by a population of unsophisticated individuals interacting locally with one other and with their environment.

Although there is typically no centralized control dictating the behavior of the individuals, local interactions among individuals often cause a global pattern to emerge.Examples of systems like this can be found in nature, including ant colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, honey bees, and many more.Ant Colony Optimization(ACO) and Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO) are some of the key SI paradigms.ACO is a probabilistic technique, introduced by Marco Dorigo, for solving computational problems which can be reduced to finding good paths through graphs. This technique is inspired by the behaviour of ants in finding paths from the colony to food. PSO is a population based stochastic optimization technique developed by Rusell Eberhart and James Kennedy in 1995, inspired by social behavior of bird flocking or fish schooling.

The Bible in the Book of Proverbs 6:6-9 says:

Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,
yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.
How long will you lie there, you sluggard?
When will you get up from your sleep?

From this, we see that the potential of ants and other swarm based organisms, being exploited in recent state-of-the-art research works, is not a new phenomenon.It has always been there as pointed by the author of Proverbs. This proves to me that there is really nothing novel (new)!!!If you are doubting , check this scripture from Ecclesiates 1:10 which says:

Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.

Someone might be asking:If nothing is novel in the research world, then why do you go for a career in research?My answer is simple.I am not driven by the goal to create something new;I am driven by the quest for knowledge, understanding and exploring areas where I can apply the attained knowledge in order to achieve better performance than the existing methods!

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