Abstract
O. Burchan Bayazit, Jyh-Ming Lien, Nancy M. Amato, "Swarming Behavior Using Probabilistic Roadmap Techniques," Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3342/2005:112-125, Jan 2005.
Journal(ps, pdf, abstract)
While techniques exist for simulating swarming behaviors, these methods usually provide only simplistic navigation and planning capabilities. In this review, we explore the benefits of integrating roadmapbased path planning methods with flocking techniques to achieve different behaviors. We show how group behaviors such as exploring can be
facilitated by using dynamic roadmaps (e.g., modifying edge weights) as an implicit means of communication between flock members. Extending ideas from cognitive modeling, we embed behavior rules in individual flock members and in the roadmap. These behavior rules enable the flock members to modify their actions based on their current location and state. We propose new techniques for several distinct group behaviors:
homing, exploring (covering and goal searching), passing through narrow
areas and shepherding. We present results that show that our methods
provide significant improvement over methods that utilize purely local
knowledge and moreover, that we achieve performance approaching that
which could be obtained by an ideal method that has complete global
knowledge. Animations of these behaviors can be viewed on our webpages.