Reinforcement learning scheme for grouping and anti-predator behavior

Abstract

Collective behavior such as bird flocking, land animal herding, and fish schooling is well known in nature. Many observations have shown that there are no leaders to control the behavior of a group. Several models have been proposed for describing the grouping behavior, which we regard as a distinctive example of aggregate motions. In these models, a fixed rule is provided for each of the individuals a priori for their interactions in a reductive and rigid manner. In contrast, we propose a new framework for the self-organized grouping of agents by reinforcement learning. It is important to introduce a learning scheme for causing collective behavior in artificial autonomous distributed systems. The behavior of agents is demonstrated and evaluated through computer simulations and it is shown that their grouping and anti-predator behavior emerges as a result of learning. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.