Experiments: basic research on living systems, not technology.
Also: honeybee swarms, ant trails, collective intelligence
Bee swarms and ant colonies make group decisions with no leader, by simple signals between individuals.
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Seeley and colleagues found scout bees send stop signals to bees promoting rival nest sites, helping the swarm reach one decision.
As reported in: Seeley, Visscher, Schlegel et al. (2012). Stop Signals Provide Cross Inhibition in Collective Decision-Making by Honeybee Swarms. Science. doi:10.1126/science.1210361
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Goss and colleagues described self-organised shortcuts in Argentine ant trails.
As reported in: Goss, Aron, Deneubourg et al. (1989). Self-organized shortcuts in the Argentine ant. Naturwissenschaften. doi:10.1007/BF00462870
Dorigo and colleagues proposed the "ant system", a computing method based on how ant colonies work, and tested it on the travelling salesman problem.
As reported in: Dorigo, Maniezzo, Colorni (1996). Ant system: optimization by a colony of cooperating agents. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B (Cybernetics). doi:10.1109/3477.484436
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