Constraint as a Design Principle: Bio-Inspired Fault Tolerance in Infrastructure-Sparse Distributed Systems

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for distributed coordination in infrastructure-sparse environments, where inter-agent communication is unreliable, external localisation is degraded or absent, and no centralised coordination authority exists. Three biological reference systems are examined: stigmergic coordination in social insects, topological neighbour rules in starling flocks, and geometric self-righting in domed tortoises. Each is argued to exhibit properties analogous to Byzantine fault tolerance without employing any explicit consensus protocol. Four common constraints of infrastructure-sparse environments (unreliable communication, unreliable localisation, absent centralised coordination, and limited onboard compute) are then reframed as design features, each mapping onto a corresponding fault-tolerant system property. The paper presents a conceptual framework rather than experimental results.