Researchers Reference Flocking Birds to Improve Swarmbots 62
inghamb87 writes "Scientists have studied flocks of starlings and cracked the mystery behind the birds' ability to fly in large formations, and regroup quickly after attacks, without getting confused and ramming into each other. While the information is cool, some scientists seem to think that the best use of this knowledge is not to aid our appreciation of nature, but to make more effective robot swarms. We've talked about swarming robots many times before, but usually researchers look to insects for inspiration."
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PDF of referenced collective behavior research (Score:1, Informative)
M. Ballerini, N. Cabibbo, R. Candelier, A. Cavagna, E. Cisbani, I. Giardina, V. Lecomte, A. Orlandi, G. Parisi, A. Procaccini, M. Viale, and V. Zdravkovic
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/105/4/1232 [pnas.org]
Re:Link to article (Score:3, Informative)
Interaction Ruling Animal Collective Behaviour Depends on Topological rather than Metric Distance: Evidence from a Field Study [arxiv.org]
Numerical models indicate that collective animal behaviour may emerge from simple local rules of interaction among the individuals. However, very little is known about the nature of such interaction, so that models and theories mostly rely on aprioristic assumptions. By reconstructing the three-dimensional position of individual birds in airborne flocks of few thousands members, we prove that the interaction does not depend on the metric distance, as most current models and theories assume, but rather on the topological distance. In fact, we discover that each bird interacts on average with a fixed number of neighbours (six-seven), rather than with all neighbours within a fixed metric distance. We argue that a topological interaction is indispensable to maintain flock's cohesion against the large density changes caused by external perturbations, typically predation. We support this hypothesis by numerical simulations, showing that a topological interaction grants significantly higher cohesion of the aggregation compared to a standard metric one.
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