title: Foraging swarms as Nash equilibria of dynamic games.
abstract: The question of whether foraging swarms can form as a result of a noncooperative game played by individuals is shown here to have an affirmative answer. A dynamic game played by N agents in 1-D motion is introduced and models, for instance, a foraging ant colony. Each agent controls its velocity to minimize its total work done in a finite time interval. The game is shown to have a unique Nash equilibrium under two different foraging location specifications, and both equilibria display many features of a foraging swarm behavior observed in biological swarms. Explicit expressions are derived for pairwise distances between individuals of the swarm, swarm size, and swarm center location during foraging.
authors.forename: Arif Bülent
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Özgüler
authors.forename: Aykut
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Yildiz
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D003491:Cybernetics; D005716:Game Theory; D008954:Models, Biological