Group Behaviors for Systems with Significant Dynamics

Birds, fish, and many other animals travel as a flock, school, or herd. Animals in these groups must remain in close proximity while avoiding collisions with neighbors and with obstacles. We would like to reproduce this behavior for groups of artificial creatures with significant dynamics. In this paper we describe an algorithm for creatures that move as a group and evaluate the performance of the algorithm with three simulated systems: legged robots, human-like bicycle riders, and point-mass systems. Both the legged robots and the bicyclists are dynamic simulations that must control balance, facing direction, and forward speed as well as movement with the group. The point-mass systems have minimal dynamics and are included to facilitate our understanding of the effects of the dynamics on the performance of the algorithms.