Robot Herds: Group Behaviors for Systems with Significant Dynamics

Birds, sh, and many other animals are able to move gracefully and e ciently as a herd, ock, or school. We would like to reproduce this behavior for herds of articial creatures with signi cant dynamics. This paper develops an algorithm for grouping behaviors and evaluates the performance of the algorithm on two types of systems: a full dynamic simulation of a legged robot that must balance as well as move with the herd and a point mass with minimal dynamics. Robust control algorithms for group behaviors of dynamic systems will allow us to generate realistic motion for animation using high-level controls, to develop synthetic actors for use in virtual environments, mobile robotics, and perhaps to improve our understanding of the behavior of biological systems.

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