Don't push me! Collision-avoiding swarms

This paper examines a particle swarm algorithm which has been applied to the generation of interactive, improvised music. An important feature of this algorithm is a balance between particle attraction to the centre of mass and repulsive, collision avoiding forces. These forces are not present in the classic particle swarm optimisation algorithms. A number of experiments illuminate the nature of these new forces and it is suggested that the algorithm may have applications to dynamic optimisation problems.