Abstract
Ross T. Sowell, O. Burchan Bayazit, Jyh-Ming Lien, Nancy M. Amato, "Better Shepherding Behaviors Using Improved Shepherd Locomotion," Technical Report, TR03-009, Parasol Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, Texas A&M University, Aug 2003.
Technical Report(ps, pdf, abstract)
Flocking behavior is very common in nature, and there have been ongoing research efforts to simulate such behavior in computer animations and robotics applications. Shepherding is one type of flocking behavior in which an outside agent guides or shepherds the members of the flock. Simulating this shepherding behavior is interesting because of its commonality in nature. A sheep dog guiding a flock of sheep, cowboys driving a herd of cattle, a predator hunting a group of its prey, and a flock of geese following a mother goose are all examples of shepherding behaviors found in nature. Currently, little work has been done on simulating these types of behaviors. In this work, we investigate ways to improve existent methods of simulating single agent shepherding behaviors. We define the locomotion of a shepherd, and we explore methods of increasing the efficiency of a shepherd in herding a flock from a start to a goal position.