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Modelling Flocks of Birds from the Bottom Up

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Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation. Adaptation and Learning (ISoLA 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13703))

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Abstract

We argue that compositional specification based on formal languages can facilitate the modelling of, and reasoning about, sophisticated collective behaviour in many natural systems. One defines a system in terms of individual components and local rules, so that collective behaviours emerge naturally from the combined effect of the different actions of the individual components. With appropriate linguistic constructs, this can yield compact and intuitive models that are easy to refine and extend in small incremental steps. In addition, automated workflows implemented on top of this methodology can provide quick feedback, thereby allowing rapid design iterations. To support our argument, we consider flocking, a well-known example of emergent behaviour in collective adaptive systems. We build a minimalistic bottom-up model of a flock of birds incrementally, discussing specific language constructs as we go along. We then describe a prototype simulator, and use it to validate our model in a controlled experiment, where a flock is attacked by a bird of prey. The flock effectively reacts to the attack by splitting into smaller groups and regathering once the threat subsides, consistently with both natural observations and previous models from the literature.

Work partially funded by MIUR project PRIN 2017FTXR7S IT MATTERS (Methods and Tools for Trustworthy Smart Systems).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this paper, we present condensed, human-readable versions of the full, machine-readable specifications. These are available at https://github.com/labs-lang/labs-examples/tree/isola2022/isola2022.

  2. 2.

    https://github.com/labs-lang/sliver/.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IMT School of Advanced Studies, Lucca, Italy

    Rocco De Nicola & Serenella Valiani

  2. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Inria, CNRS, Grenoble INP, LIG, Grenoble, France

    Luca Di Stefano

  3. University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Luca Di Stefano

  4. Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI), L’Aquila, Italy

    Omar Inverso

Authors
  1. Rocco De Nicola
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  2. Luca Di Stefano
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  3. Omar Inverso
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  4. Serenella Valiani
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Correspondence to Serenella Valiani .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Limerick, CSIS and Lero, Limerick, Ireland

    Tiziana Margaria

  2. TU Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    Bernhard Steffen

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De Nicola, R., Di Stefano, L., Inverso, O., Valiani, S. (2022). Modelling Flocks of Birds from the Bottom Up. In: Margaria, T., Steffen, B. (eds) Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation. Adaptation and Learning. ISoLA 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13703. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19759-8_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19759-8_6

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