This is the readme for "PSO" a Particle Swarm Optimizer object for PD/MAX. 

This implimentation of a PSO minimizes towards a user-defined target. It is based on code from Jim Kennedy and Thomas Grill.

PSO is Copyright Ben Bogart 2003

If you have any questions/comments you can reach the author at ben@ekran.org.

This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public 
License 

PSO is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or 
(at your option) any later version.

PSO is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, 
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of 
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details. 

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with PSO; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA

USAGE:

The PSO object requires three arguments (see below). The object has one inlet and three outlets. 
In order to calculate one iteration of the PSO send it a bang. The three outlets are:

Outlet 1: A index prepended list of the positions in each dimention of each particle.
Outlet 2: The Minimization value (should move towards 0)
Outlet 3: Outputs a bang when Minimization is reached. (This is a user defined threshold, not 0)

Arguments: [Population Size] [Number of Dimensions] [Neighborhood Size]

PSO Help Method:
  'help'                        - This message.

PSO Setup Methods:
  'target [list]'               - Specify the optimization target with list of values for each dimension.
  'rand_pop [min] [max]'        - Randomize the population with values ranging from min to max.
  'set_pop [list]'              - Set population with list of values for each particle for each dimension.
  'set_part [particle] [list]'  - Set particle with values for each dimension.
  'optim_thresh [int]'          - Set the threshold at which minimization is considered reached. (0-10)

PSO Run-Time Methods:
  'reset'                       - Reset the PSO.
  bang                          - Calculate one interation of the PSO.

Have Fun.