Timeline

15/04/25David Mezey

13/05/25Mate Nagy

29/04/25 Marina Papadopoulou

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20/05/25Journal Club

22/04/25 Ralf Kurvers

06/05/25Pawel Romanczuk

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27/05/25Jacob Davidson

10/06/25Andrew J. King

24/6/25Tim Landgraf decided

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17/06/25Heiko Hamann

03/06/25Jens Krause

Other Activities

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Photo by Pavel Danilyuk

Photo by Christina Morillo

08/07/25ABM Workshop 1/2

01/07/25Ethics Discussion with Alan Winfield and Dafna Burema

Report and Assignment

Lecture Series

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08/07/25 Lab Tour

15/07/25ABM Workshop 2/2

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Final Assignments and Requirements

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To complete the course and collect the 3ECTS (2SWS), participants are required to fulfill the following criteria:

1. >90% in person participation rate on lectures and ethics discussion. (rare excpetions possible on an individual basis)
2. Preparing 1 question about the ethical considerations of collective behavior research before the ethics discussion.
3. One of the following theoretical requirements:
1. EITHER Written ca. 2 page essay about a selected topic from the lecture series
2. OR a short, ca. 10 minutes presentation and discussion moderation during the journal club
4. Participation in and finishing tasks during the 2-day programming workshop. (Can be finished and submitted on the spot or after the workshop remotely)

Organizer: David Mezeyand the Scientists of SCIoI

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Lab Tour at theScience of Intelligence Excellence Cluster

During this 90-minute lab tour, participants will have the chance to take a closer look at current research at SCIoI. Demonstrations will span a wide range of exciting projects, including escape rooms, virtual and mixed reality, robot arms, social robots, and swarm robots. Participation in this visit is not required to complete the course. When: 08/07/25 10:00-11:30 Where: TU MAR 2.013

Images from M. Papadopoulou

Speaker: MARINA PAPADOPOULOU

Across the Swarm-Verse: the self-organization of animal collectives on the move

From the daily movement of primate troops to the mesmerizing murmurations of starling flocks in the sky, the dynamics of animal groups on the move fascinate us with the mystery of their underlying social interactions. In this talk, I will first showcase how we combine empirical data and computational models based on self-organization to understand the individual rules that underlie collective behaviour, using bird flocks under attack by a robotic predator as a case study. Given that identifying unique and common traits across systems is necessary to understand the ecological and evolutionary processes that shape the diversity of collective behaviour we see in nature, I will further present the Swarm-Verse, a new framework to quantify variation in collective motion across species, using studies on fish, goats, pigeons and baboons.

When: 29/04/2025 14:00-15:30Where: via Zoom

Organizer: David Mezey

Agent-based Modeling Workshop (Day 1)

During the first day of this 2-day programming workshop participants will get to know the basic python/pygame framework of the course. Participants will implement one of two possible collective behavior as a computational model using interactive teaching material. Participants are required to have a basic knowledge in programming in python. A laptop with Windows/MacOS/Linux will be required and the necessary programming environment should be prepared.For preparation please follow: t.b.c. When: 08/07/25 11:30-12:30 & 13:30-17:00 Where: TU MAR 2.013

Speaker: Jens Krause

The Adaptive Value of Collective Behaviour

In this talk I will discuss the adaptive value of collective behaviour from different perspectives. One perspective is the potential ability of groups or collectives to make better and even faster decisions. In this context I will show some of the modelling approaches to explain collective intelligence and the empirical support for them in the laboratory and in the field. Furthermore, I will show some empirical findings regarding collective intelligence which challenge our current understanding of the underlying mechanisms. Another perspective is that of collective behaviour as a defense against predators. It has been found in a number of different species that various forms of collective spirals and waves can fend off predators. This implies that at a global group-wide level, collective patterns are not just beautiful to look at but can provide anti-predator functions which are just beginning to understand.

When: 03/06/2025 14:00-15:30Where: TU MAR 2.057 and Zoom

Images by Jens Krause and Korbinian Pacher

Image from Deffner et al. (2024)

Speaker: Ralf Kurvers

Individual, social and ecological drivers of human collective foraging

Foraging complexity and competitive social challenges are considered key drivers of human cognition. Yet, we still have a poor understanding of the decision-making mechanisms underlying foraging behavior, especially in social contexts. In this talk, I will combine immersive lab experiments, field work using high-resolution tracking, and computational and agent-based models to uncover the mechanisms guiding human foraging decisions. I hope to convince you that foraging provides a rich test bed to study a broad range of cognitive processes, such as memory, learning, and evidence accumulation, and that the current technological advancements allow us to do this even in the challenging conditions of the natural world.

When: 22/04/2025 14:00-15:30Where: TU MAR 2.057

Photo by Ralf Kurvers

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Speaker: MATE NAGY

Multi-scale analysis of collective animal behaviour across species and contexts

Image by Mate Nagy

Understanding the mechanisms driving collective behaviour in animal groups requires integrating high-resolution tracking, scalable analytics, and cross-species comparisons. In this talk, I present findings from five studies that apply novel methodological frameworks—including drone-based movement reconstruction, miniature GPS tracking, and the SMART-BARN multimodal tracking arena—to explore group coordination and social structure in horses, birds, and fish. We uncover hierarchical and context-dependent interaction networks in pigeon flocks, identify predictive movement patterns in Przewalski’s horses that reflect not just the current group structure, but can predict past and future changes, and reveal how leadership and energetic efficiency trade-offs shape migration in white storks. These results demonstrate how fine-scale local interactions scale to long-term and large-scale collective outcomes, and offer generalizable models for studying the interplay between social organisation and collective decision-making in animal societies.

When: 13/05/2025 14:00-15:30Where: TU MAR 2.057 and Zoom

Speaker: ANdrew j. King

Understanding animal collective behaviour across systems

I am a scientist driven by curiosity, exploring questions across species, contexts, and methods. My research group investigates how and why individuals engage in collective behaviour, using a wide range of systems, perspectives, and tools. In this seminar, I will present our fundamental work in behavioural biology, as well as its applied themes, including animal management and bio-inspired engineering.

Image by GPT4o and David Mezey

When: 10/06/2025 14:00-15:30Where: via Zoom

Speaker: Pawel Romanczuk

Images from Bastien & Romanczuk

Modeling Collective Behavior with Agent-Based Models

Collective behaviors exhibited by animal groups represent a fascinating example of self-organization in biology. Over the past decades, significant progress has been made in understanding how complex collective dynamics can emerge from simple, local interaction rules between individuals, and in uncovering the functions of these behaviors. In this context, agent-based modeling has proven to be an essential research tool, providing crucial insights into the mechanisms underlying collective behavior in biological systems. Moreover, corresponding mathematical models serve as a bridge between the description of biological collectives and the design and implementation of bio-inspired swarm robotic systems. In this talk, I will first provide a general introduction to agent-based modeling of collective behavior. I will then focus on modeling movement coordination in swarms and flocks, and discuss recent developments in the field, with a particular emphasis on the possible role of sensory and cognitive constraints of individuals.

When: 06/05/2025 14:00-15:30Where: TU MAR 2.057 and Zoom

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Status: Talk Scheduled

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Organizer: David Mezey

Agent-based Modeling Workshop (Day 2)

During the second day of the programming workshop, participants will complete their computational models and have the opportunity to transfer them to our in-house mixed-reality projection system, allowing real-time interaction with these models. We will conclude by discussing how such systems can be used in individual and collective animal behavior research, including studies involving humans.When: 15/07/25 10:00-12:30 & 13:30-17:00 Where: TU MAR 2.013

Speaker: Jacob Davidson

How individual differences drive collective dynamics from fish to worms

Collective behavior emerges from local interactions, yet the individuals that make up a group are rarely identical. Differences among individuals often decide whether a group stays together or splits apart, and can shape key processes like disease spread by linking behavioral variation to internal states or external stressors. I will show how large-scale tracking lets us measure this heterogeneity within groups and how agent-based models help uncover the underlying mechanisms.

When: 27/05/2025 14:00-15:30Where: TU MAR 2.057 and Zoom

Images by Narcis Font-Massot

Organizer: David Mezey

Journal Club

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Participants will read (in advance) 3 of the most fundamental works on modeling and studying collective behavior with a special focus on perception-based models. Students can bypass the final writing assigment by preparing a short presentation and leading a discussion about one of the selected papers. The journal club also prepares 3 of the following talks through discussing the main work of the speakers.Find the papers here: t.b.c. When: 20/05/25, 14:00-15:30 Where: TU MAR 2.057

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Speaker: David Mezey

Introduction to Modeling Collective Behavior:Course Introduction and Motivation

During this talk participants can learn more about the motivation behind the course, about the technical requirements to participate and about the course structure. When: 15/04/2025 14:00-15:30 Where: TU MAR 2.057

Speaker: HEIKO HAMANN

From Models to Machines: A Roboticist’s View on Collective Behavior

Swarm robotics investigates how large numbers of relatively simple, autonomous robots can coordinate to complete complex collective tasks. In this lecture, we explore how models of collective behavior can guide the design of such systems. We highlight how modeling collective behavior is not only a tool for understanding natural systems, but a powerful method to synthesize coordinated behaviors in robot swarms. We contrast bio-mimicry to more abstract bio-inspired paradigms. Through examples like task allocation and flocking, we demonstrate how biological insights can shape engineering choices. An impressive insight from biology is that ‘less is more,’ that is, less communication or less knowledge can sometimes increase the swarm’s performance. We conclude by briefly discussing swarm robotics applications that diverge from biological analogies and reflect on future directions.

Image by Heiko Hamann

When: 17/06/2025 14:00-15:30Where: TU MAR, room 2.057 and Zoom