概要： We study a simple model of information-processing (living) agents. These agents seek maximal control of their environment via “future state maximisation” (FSM), a principle that connects fitness with information processing more generally. In particular, we study moving, re-orientable agents. The action of each agent is (re)established by exhaustive enumeration of its future decision tree at each time step - each agent chooses the branch of its tree leading from the present to the richest future state space. Remarkably, cohesive swarm-like motion emerges that is similar to that observed in animal systems, such as bird flocks. We develop heuristics that mimic computationally intensive FSM but that could operate in real-time under animal cognition. This offers a philosophically attractive, bottom-up mechanism for the emergence of swarming. I will conclude by asking whether FSM may also have applications in cell regulatory or neuronal networks.

Bio: Matthew Turner is currently a JSPS long term fellow at Kyoto University hosted by Prof Yamamoto in the Chem. Eng. department (until at least September 2020). He obtained his PhD from Cambridge University in 1991 under the direction of Prof Mike Cates, currently Lucasian professor. He enjoyed a postdoc with Prof Jean-Francois Joanny before undertaking independent fellowships at UCSB and Rockefeller University in the USA. He has been a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, a Royal Society University Research Fellow and, most recently, a UK “EPSRC” Leadership Fellow. He is currently on sabbatical from his position as a full professor of Physics and a member of the Centre for Complexity Science at Warwick University in England. In recent years he has held various visiting positions before coming to Kyoto, including the Joliot-Curie and Mayant-Rothschild chairs at ESPCI and Institut Curie in Paris. His interests lie in soft and active matter physics and their interface with living systems.