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Criticality and transmission of information in a swarm of cooperative units
Fabio Vanni1, Mirko Luković, Paolo Grigolini
1Center for Nonlinear Science, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas 76203, USA.
Abstract:
We show that the intelligence of a swarm of cooperative units (birds) emerges at criticality, as an effect of the joint action of frequent organizational collapses and of spatial correlation as extended as the flock size. The organizational collapses make the birds become independent of one another, thereby allowing the flock to follow the direction of the lookout birds. Long-range correlation violates the principle of locality, making the lookout birds transmit information on either danger or resources with a time delay determined by the time distance between two consecutive collapses.
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