Boids is an artificial life program, developed by Craig Reynolds in 1986, which simulates the flocking behaviour of birds, and related group motion.
The closely related work of Ichiro Aoki is noteworthy because it was published in 1982 — five years before Reynolds' boids paper.
The boids framework is often used in computer graphics, providing realistic-looking representations of flocks of birds and other creatures, such as schools of fish or herds of animals.
For stabilization of heterogeneous UAV-UGV teams, the model was adapted for using onboard relative localization by Saska et al.[8] At the time of proposal, Reynolds' approach represented a giant step forward compared to the traditional techniques used in computer animation for motion pictures.
[12] Biologist Richard Dawkins references the Boids model in his 2009 book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.