Boids

Abstract: This tutorial demonstrates the use of agent-based simulation (ABS) in modeling emergent behaviors. We first introduce key concepts of ABS by using two simple examples: the Game of Life and the Boids models. We illustrate agent-based modeling issues and simulation of emergent behaviors by using examples in social networks, auction-type markets, emergency evacuation, crowd behavior under normal situations, biology, material science, chemistry, and archaeology. Finally, we discuss the relationship between ABS and other simulation methodologies and outline some research challenges in ABS.

Abstract: This research demonstrates how principles of self-organization and behavior simulation can be used to represent dynamic data evolutions by extending the concept of information flocking, originally introduced by Proctor & Winter (1998), to time-varying datasets. A rule-based behavior system continuously controls and updates the dynamic actions of individual, three-dimensional elements that represent the changing data values of reoccurring data objects. As a result, different distinguishable motion types emerge that are driven by local interactions between the spatial elements as well as the evolution of time-varying data values. Notably, this representation technique focuses on the representation of dynamic data alteration characteristics, or how reoccurring data objects change over time, instead of depicting the exact data values themselves. In addition, it demonstrates the potential of motion as a useful information visualization cue. The original information flocking approach is extended to incorporate time-varying datasets, live database querying, continuous data streaming, real-time data similarity evaluation, automatic shape generation and more stable flocking algorithms. Different experiments prove that information flocking is capable of representing short-term events as well as long-term temporal data evolutions of both individual and groups of time-dependent data objects. An historical stock market quote price dataset is used to demonstrate the algorithms and principles of time-varying information flocking

Abstract: From the Publisher: What is life? Is it just the biologically familiar - birds, trees, snails, people - or is it an infinitely complex set of patterns that a computer could simulate? What role does intelligence play in separating the organic from the inorganic, the living from the inert? Does life evolve along a predestined path, or does it suddenly emerge from what appeared lifeless and programmatic? In this easily accessible and wide-ranging survey, Claus Emmeche outlines many of the challenges and controversies involved in the dynamic and curious science of artificial life. Emmeche describes the work being done by an international network of biologists, computer scientists, and physicists who are using computers to study life as it could be, or as it might evolve under conditions different from those on earth. Many artificial-life researchers believe that they can create new life in the computer by simulating the processes observed in traditional, biological life-forms. The flight of a flock of birds, for example, can be reproduced faithfully and in all its complexity by a relatively simple computer program that is designed to generate electronic "boids." Are these "boids" then alive? The central problem, Emmeche notes, lies in defining the salient differences between biological life and computer simulations of its processes. And yet, if we can breathe life into a computer, what might this mean for our other assumptions about what it means to be alive? The Garden in the Machine touches on every aspect of this complex and rapidly developing discipline, including its connections to artificial intelligence, chaos theory, computational theory, and studies of emergence. Drawing on the most current work in the field, this book is the definitive overview of artificial life. Professionals and nonscientists alike will find it an invaluable guide to concepts and technologies that may forever change our definition of life.

Abstract: We consider flocks of artificial birds and study the emergence of V-like formations during flight. We introduce a small set of fully distributed positioning rules to guide the birds' movements and demonstrate, by means of simulations, that they tend to lead to stabilization into several of the well-known V-like formations that have been observed in nature. We also provide quantitative indicators that we believe are closely related to achieving V-like formations, and study their behavior over a large set of independent simulations.