From consensus to consensus: random evolution of collective choices

Decentralized coordination can be achieved by the emergence of a consensual choice inside a group of simple agents. The work done on the emergence of social laws and the emergence of a shared lexicon are known examples of possible benefits of consensus formation. In this paper, we show the possibility of creating random succession of social choices inside a group of simple and homogeneous agents with limited perception abilities where there is no central control. The society of agents evolves in a sequence of different consensual choices, from consensus to consensus, in a kind of random collective walk. The transition between different collective choices is conditioned by performance criteria as we do not want that a society oscillates between several possible decisions but that it chooses one of them as quickly as possible. Both the nature of the collective choices and the duration of the consensus are completely random. We introduce a very simple individual behavior that was originally derived from a failure attempt to use an auto-organization model of dominance order formation in the animal world. We show one application of this transition between consensual choices in a group of micro-painters that create random artistic patterns