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Dynamic organization of flocking behaviors in a large-scale boids model

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Abstract

A simulation of a half-million flock is studied using a simple boids model originally proposed by Craig Reynolds. It was modeled with a differential equation in 3D space with a periodic boundary. Flocking is collective behavior of active agents, which is often observed in the real world (e.g., starling swarms). It is, nevertheless, hard to rigorously define flocks (or their boundaries). First, even within the same swarm, the members are constantly updated, and second, flocks sometimes merge or divide dynamically. To define individual flocks and to capture their dynamic features, we applied a DBSCAN and a non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) to the boid dataset. Flocking behavior has different types of dynamics depending on the size of the flock. A function of different flocks is discussed with the result of NMF analysis.

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Acknowledgements

This study is supported by MEXT as “Challenging Research on Post-K Computer”: Modeling and Application of Multiple Interaction of Social and Economic Phenomena (Project ID: hp180208) and partially supported by the JSPS KAKENHI project A “Organization and Realization of Collective Intelligence Based on the Ethological and Life-Theoretical Investigations” (17H01249).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Norihiro Maruyama, Daichi Saito, Yasuhiro Hashimoto & Takashi Ikegami

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  1. Norihiro Maruyama
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  2. Daichi Saito
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  3. Yasuhiro Hashimoto
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  4. Takashi Ikegami
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Correspondence to Norihiro Maruyama.

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Maruyama, N., Saito, D., Hashimoto, Y. et al. Dynamic organization of flocking behaviors in a large-scale boids model. J Comput Soc Sc 2, 77–84 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-019-00037-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-019-00037-9

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