ABSTRACT
The field of nature-inspired computing (NIC) is interdisciplinary in nature, combining computing science with knowledge from different branches of sciences, for example, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and engineering, that allows development of new computational tools such as algorithms, hardware or wetware for problem solving and synthesis of patterns. This chapter presents a brief summary of these developments, which would be helpful in understanding different phenomena observed in nature, theories developed to explain those, and concepts behind nature-inspired approaches, methods, and algorithms. It discusses Physics-Based Algorithms (PBAs) that employ basic principles of physics, for example, Newton's laws of gravitation, laws of motion and Coulomb's force law of electrical charge. On the basis of the laws of gravitation and natural physical forces, a number of computing algorithms have been proposed by researchers. Ray and Liew developed the concept of an optimization algorithm based on the intra- and intersociety interactions within a formal society and the civilization model to solve constrained optimization problems.
