Lifelong Evolution of Swarms

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Leuzzi, Lorenzo, Jones, Simon, Hauert, Sabine, Bacciu, Davide, Cossu, Andrea
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Leuzzi, Lorenzo
Jones, Simon
Hauert, Sabine
Bacciu, Davide
Cossu, Andrea
author_facet Leuzzi, Lorenzo
Jones, Simon
Hauert, Sabine
Bacciu, Davide
Cossu, Andrea
contents Adapting to task changes without forgetting previous knowledge is a key skill for intelligent systems, and a crucial aspect of lifelong learning. Swarm controllers, however, are typically designed for specific tasks, lacking the ability to retain knowledge across changing tasks. Lifelong learning, on the other hand, focuses on individual agents with limited insights into the emergent abilities of a collective like a swarm. To address this gap, we introduce a lifelong evolutionary framework for swarms, where a population of swarm controllers is evolved in a dynamic environment that incrementally presents novel tasks. This requires evolution to find controllers that quickly adapt to new tasks while retaining knowledge of previous ones, as they may reappear in the future. We discover that the population inherently preserves information about previous tasks, and it can reuse it to foster adaptation and mitigate forgetting. In contrast, the top-performing individual for a given task catastrophically forgets previous tasks. To mitigate this phenomenon, we design a regularization process for the evolutionary algorithm, reducing forgetting in top-performing individuals. Evolving swarms in a lifelong fashion raises fundamental questions on the current state of deep lifelong learning and on the robustness of swarm controllers in dynamic environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_17763
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Lifelong Evolution of Swarms
Leuzzi, Lorenzo
Jones, Simon
Hauert, Sabine
Bacciu, Davide
Cossu, Andrea
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Artificial Intelligence
Adapting to task changes without forgetting previous knowledge is a key skill for intelligent systems, and a crucial aspect of lifelong learning. Swarm controllers, however, are typically designed for specific tasks, lacking the ability to retain knowledge across changing tasks. Lifelong learning, on the other hand, focuses on individual agents with limited insights into the emergent abilities of a collective like a swarm. To address this gap, we introduce a lifelong evolutionary framework for swarms, where a population of swarm controllers is evolved in a dynamic environment that incrementally presents novel tasks. This requires evolution to find controllers that quickly adapt to new tasks while retaining knowledge of previous ones, as they may reappear in the future. We discover that the population inherently preserves information about previous tasks, and it can reuse it to foster adaptation and mitigate forgetting. In contrast, the top-performing individual for a given task catastrophically forgets previous tasks. To mitigate this phenomenon, we design a regularization process for the evolutionary algorithm, reducing forgetting in top-performing individuals. Evolving swarms in a lifelong fashion raises fundamental questions on the current state of deep lifelong learning and on the robustness of swarm controllers in dynamic environments.
title Lifelong Evolution of Swarms
topic Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.17763