did Jose Halloy just catch the attention of war-games planners? offensive robotic swarms defensively co-optable ?

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Mechanical pied pipers for cockroaches

Alison Abbott, Munich, Nature News

Referenced Sources: (1) José Halloy “From individual capabilities to collective behaviors in natural and artificial systems“ (2) Science: “Social Integration of Robots into Groups of Cockroaches to Control Self-Organized Choices” and (3) PNAS

Collegial decision making based on social amplification leads to optimal group formation

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“Scientists have designed tiny robots that can mingle with a social group of cockroaches and influence their behaviour.

“They say that similar robots will help them to unpick the decision-making processes in other gregarious species that carry out ‘collective behaviours’ [see, see] such as deciding where to rest or selecting food sources. The researchers report their studies in today’s Science.

“Unlike ants and bees, [see] cockroaches do not have a sophisticated social structure, but they do take notice of what their fellows are doing. Last year José Halloy, a theoretical biologist at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, reported that when cockroaches have a choice of two or more shelters under which to settle, their decision is influenced by the number of cockroaches already there.” . . . (full article)

Image credit: Sergey Kornienko Wikimedia

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Newcomb’s commentary: “To succeed in chaining the crowd you must seem to wear the same fetters.” Voltaire

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