Socially aware flocking

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an increasingly important and popular topic not just within the field of Computer Science but also the world at large. One of the current challenges in the field of AI is multi-agent planning, of which Swarm Intelligence (SI) is a possible solution drawing from natural systems as an inspiration. While individual agents in a flock or swarm are mostly simplistic and similar in nature, together they can develop extremely complex and emergent behaviour. A very well-known implementation of Swarm Intelligence is “Boids”. Bird like objects first introduced by Craig Reynolds in 1987 that flock and move together based on the 3 core steering behaviours of Separation, Alignment, and Cohesion. However, even current work on boids tend to let individual agents be “reactive” in nature, giving instructions to themselves based on their current state and their observations of the environment around them. This project aims to study how adding an additional layer on top of traditional flocking behaviour, by making agents “socially aware” through actively sharing opinions with each other, will affect the dynamics of a flock.