Complete information retention by a swarm of imperfect carrier agents

Abstract

Imperfect carrier agents carry incomplete information. However, as a swarm a complete set of information can be retained if the swarm only requires a cumulative availability. The retention of complete information set of length L maintains the operation of the swarm resulting to its robust dynamics. If any part of that information is lost (or becomes false), the whole swarm functionality breaks down. Examples include: a community loses its cultural identity when part of their culture is lost, a biological organism dies when one organs fail to function, or a virus fails to infect host cells when at least one of the genes are not delivered into the cell. Here, we investigate the possible retention of the whole size L by a swarm of N carrier agents even if each agent is imperfect. When applied to typical values of L and q, a critical swarm size of N* ~ 10 results.