Cooperation: Concepts and General Typology

Life on this planet is full of astonishing examples of cooperation. Individual species depend upon one another for sustenance, often forming surprising alliances to achieve a common goal: continuance of the species. The majority of living things also display amazing altruism in order to protect and provide the best care for their offspring, incomparable to any form of sacrifice shown by human beings. Studying the cooperation patterns between living things and their intelligent behaviors has been source of inspiration for many new algorithms, theories and systems. This paper addresses the concept of cooperation and why it is important. It highlights the available biologically-inspired models and algorithms, and their potential applications. The paper also presents a general typology of cooperation patterns, which can help to understand how systems could work cooperatively in an intelligent manner.