Emergent Heterogeneous Swarm Control Through Hebbian Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: van Diggelen, Fuda, Karagüzel, Tugay Alperen, Rincon, Andres Garcia, Eiben, A. E., Floreano, Dario, Ferrante, Eliseo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author van Diggelen, Fuda
Karagüzel, Tugay Alperen
Rincon, Andres Garcia
Eiben, A. E.
Floreano, Dario
Ferrante, Eliseo
author_facet van Diggelen, Fuda
Karagüzel, Tugay Alperen
Rincon, Andres Garcia
Eiben, A. E.
Floreano, Dario
Ferrante, Eliseo
contents In this paper, we introduce Hebbian learning as a novel method for swarm robotics, enabling the automatic emergence of heterogeneity. Hebbian learning presents a biologically inspired form of neural adaptation that solely relies on local information. By doing so, we resolve several major challenges for learning heterogeneous control: 1) Hebbian learning removes the complexity of attributing emergent phenomena to single agents through local learning rules, thus circumventing the micro-macro problem; 2) uniform Hebbian learning rules across all swarm members limit the number of parameters needed, mitigating the curse of dimensionality with scaling swarm sizes; and 3) evolving Hebbian learning rules based on swarm-level behaviour minimises the need for extensive prior knowledge typically required for optimising heterogeneous swarms. This work demonstrates that with Hebbian learning heterogeneity naturally emerges, resulting in swarm-level behavioural switching and in significantly improved swarm capabilities. It also demonstrates how the evolution of Hebbian learning rules can be a valid alternative to Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning in standard benchmarking tasks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_11566
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Emergent Heterogeneous Swarm Control Through Hebbian Learning
van Diggelen, Fuda
Karagüzel, Tugay Alperen
Rincon, Andres Garcia
Eiben, A. E.
Floreano, Dario
Ferrante, Eliseo
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
In this paper, we introduce Hebbian learning as a novel method for swarm robotics, enabling the automatic emergence of heterogeneity. Hebbian learning presents a biologically inspired form of neural adaptation that solely relies on local information. By doing so, we resolve several major challenges for learning heterogeneous control: 1) Hebbian learning removes the complexity of attributing emergent phenomena to single agents through local learning rules, thus circumventing the micro-macro problem; 2) uniform Hebbian learning rules across all swarm members limit the number of parameters needed, mitigating the curse of dimensionality with scaling swarm sizes; and 3) evolving Hebbian learning rules based on swarm-level behaviour minimises the need for extensive prior knowledge typically required for optimising heterogeneous swarms. This work demonstrates that with Hebbian learning heterogeneity naturally emerges, resulting in swarm-level behavioural switching and in significantly improved swarm capabilities. It also demonstrates how the evolution of Hebbian learning rules can be a valid alternative to Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning in standard benchmarking tasks.
title Emergent Heterogeneous Swarm Control Through Hebbian Learning
topic Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.11566