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Emergent behaviour in virtual agents
An investigation into causes of emergent behaviour 
Rhodes University, P.O. Box 94,
Grahamstown, Republic of South Africa |
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This research project is accepted in the Computer Science Department at Rhodes University in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of a PhD degree in Computer Science.
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 Colin Chibaya Room 217 Theatre bl Rhodes University c.chibaya@ru.ac.za
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 Prof. Shaun Bangay Hamilton Building Rhodes University s.bangay@ru.ac.za
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Objective |
Swarm intelligence is emergent behaviour observed at macro-level when simple, autonomous and identical agents cooperatively interact and communicate locally, through the environment. While macro-scale properties of the swarm look organised, micro-level activities of each agent are simple, limited and not predictive of the global behaviour. We study agents' micro-level behaviour, investigating causes of the global behaviour. |
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Motivation |
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Contributions |
Successful investigation of causes of emergent behaviour has direct influence of productivity in terms of further application of swarm intelligent metaphors in complex problem solving. In addition, understanding the micro-level causes of emergent behaviour would imply that researchers can now predict specific and desired emergent behaviour before hand. This thus would be useful in production, simulation, morphology and entertainment industry, to mention a few. |