A general modeling framework for swarms

Swarms are characterized by the ability to generate complex behavior from the coupling of simple individuals. While the swarm approach to distributed systems of moving agents is gradually finding a way to engineering applications, a true successful demonstration of an engineered swarm is still missing. One of the reasons for this is the gap between the complexity of the swarms studied in fundamental research and the complexity needed for the application to interesting control problems. In the majority of the research on swarm intelligent systems, the moving agents in the swarm are modeled as simple reactive agents. This model comprises too little intelligence to fully exploit the potential of swarms. In this paper, a general comprehensive swarm framework is introduced and related to the established state of the art. Such a framework is novel and it is a first and important step in the development and analysis of more complex and intelligent swarms.