Further results on swarms solving graph coloring

Abstract

We have proposed the mapping of graph coloring problems into swarm dynamics. Empirical evidence that flock steering behaviors augmented with the notion of hostility (enmity and friendliness) are enough to perform efficiently the task of coloring the nodes of graphs even in the case 3-coloration hard graph topologies. We discuss here what are the minimal cognitive capabilities that allow the emergent behavior of swarms to solve such NP-complete problem without mediating an explicit knowledge representation. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.