Related papers: Less-is-more in a 5-star rating system: an experim…

Individual decision-makers consume information revealed by the previous decision makers, and produce information that may help in future decisions. This phenomenon is common in a wide range of scenarios in the Internet economy, as well as…

Drawing inspiration from honeybee swarms' nest-site selection process, we assess the ability of a kilobot robot swarm to replicate this captivating example of collective decision-making. Honeybees locate the optimal site for their new nest…

The ability to learn from others (social learning) is often deemed a cause of human species success. But if social learning is indeed more efficient (whether less costly or more accurate) than individual learning, it raises the question of…

Foraging is crucial for animals to survive. Many species forage in groups, as individuals communicate to share information about the location of available resources. For example, eusocial foragers, such as honey bees and many ants, recruit…

Collective foragers, from animals to robotic swarms, must balance exploration and exploitation to locate sparse resources efficiently. While social learning is known to facilitate this balance, how the range of information sharing shapes…

Collective decision-making is a widespread phenomenon in both biological and artificial systems, where individuals reach a consensus through social interactions. While traditional models of opinion dynamics and contagion focus on pairwise…

We study the evolution of information in interactive decision making through the lens of a stochastic multi-armed bandit problem. Focusing on a fundamental example where a unique optimal arm outperforms the rest by a fixed margin, we…

To effectively forage in natural environments, organisms must adapt to changes in the quality and yield of food sources across multiple timescales. Individuals foraging in groups act based on both their private observations and the opinions…

The concerted responses of eusocial insects to environmental stimuli are often referred to as collective cognition on the level of the colony.To achieve collective cognitiona group can draw on two different sources: individual cognitionand…

Previous human foraging experiments have shown that human groups routinely undermatch environmental resources much like other animal species. In this experiment, we test whether humans also selectively rely on others as information sources…

Social interaction increases significantly the performance of a wide range of cooperative systems. However, evidence that natural swarms limit the number of social connections suggests potentially detrimental consequences of excessive…

Complex systems show the capacity to aggregate information and to display coordinated activity. In the case of social systems the interaction of different individuals leads to the emergence of norms, trends in political positions, opinions,…

We study a social bandit problem featuring production and diffusion of knowledge. While higher connectivity enhances knowledge diffusion, it may reduce knowledge production as agents shy away from experimentation with new ideas and free…

Social insect colonies and ensemble machine learning methods represent two of the most successful examples of decentralized information processing in nature and computation respectively. Here we develop a rigorous mathematical framework…

Robotic collectives are large groups (at least 50) of locally sensing and communicating robots that encompass characteristics of swarms and colonies, whose emergent behaviors accomplish complex tasks. Future human-collective teams will…

Social insects provide an excellent platform to investigate flow of information in regulatory systems since their successful social organization is essentially achieved by effective information transfer through complex connectivity patterns…

Nature is an inhabitant for enormous number of species. All the species do perform complex activities with simple and elegant rules for their survival. The property of emergence of collective behavior is remarkably supporting their…

To succeed in their objectives, groups of individuals must be able to make quick and accurate collective decisions on the best option among a set of alternatives with different qualities. Group-living animals aim to do that all the time.…

Fuelled by a desire for greater connectivity, networked systems now pervade our society at an unprecedented level that will affect it in ways we do not yet understand. In contrast, nature has already developed efficient networks that can…

The spontaneous organization of collective activities in animal groups and societies has attracted a considerable amount of attention over the last decade. This kind of coordination often permits group-living species to achieve collective…