Flocking

As a result, the term "flocking" is sometimes applied, in computer science, to species other than birds, to mean collective motion by a group of self-propelled entities, a collective animal behaviour exhibited by many living beings such as fish, bacteria, and insects.

[1] Flocking is considered an emergent behaviour arising from simple rules that are followed by individuals and does not involve any central coordination.

During the winter months, starlings are known for aggregating into huge flocks of hundreds to thousands of individuals, murmurations, which when they take flight altogether, render large displays of intriguing swirling patterns in the skies above observers.

[2] This program simulates simple agents (boids) that are allowed to move according to a set of basic rules.

Another recent study is based on an analysis of high speed camera footage of flocks above Rome, and uses a computer model assuming minimal behavioural rules.

[4][5][6][7] Basic models of flocking behaviour are controlled by three simple rules: With these three simple rules, the flock moves in an extremely realistic way, creating complex motion and interaction that would be extremely hard to create otherwise.

Olfaction was used to transmit emotion between animals, through pheromones modelled as particles in a free expansion gas.

Hemelrijk and Hildenbrandt[10] used attraction, alignment, and avoidance, and extended this with a number of traits of real starlings: The authors showed that the specifics of flying behaviour as well as large flock size and low number of interaction partners were essential to the creation of the variable shape of flocks of starlings.

Possible improvements:[citation needed] Lee Spector, Jon Klein, Chris Perry and Mark Feinstein studied the emergence of collective behaviour in evolutionary computation systems.

[13] Flocking has also been considered as a means of controlling the behaviour of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs).