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 avoidin g collisions with neighbors and with obstacles. We would like to repro duce this behavior for groups of simulated creatures traveling fast en ough that dynamics plays a significant role in determining their movem ent. In this paper, we describe an algorithm for controlling the movem ents of creatures that travel as a group and evaluate the performance of the algorithm with three simulated systems: legged robots, humanlik e bicycle riders, and point-mass systems. Both the legged robots and t he bicyclists are dynamic simulations that must control balance, facin g direction, and forward speed as well as position within the group. T he simpler point-mass systems are included because they help us to und erstand the effects of the dynamics on the performance of the algorith m.