![]() ![]() “Like natural groups, this flock of robots is very robust to the failure or death of individuals, changing group size, and environmental perturbations such as sudden gusts of wind,” says Iain Couzin, another leader in the study of collective behaviour. Tell them that they’re heading towards an imaginary alleyway, and they’ll queue up to squeeze through a gap. Tell them to form a rotating ring, or a straight line, and they’ll coordinate themselves into the right position. They were autonomous and impressive, but they offered a pale comparison to the dynamic flights of birds or Boids.īy contrast, Vicsek’s drones are free in their movements. They could only move at the same constant (and slow) speed, and they avoided crashing into one another by flying at fixed (and different) heights. He created a group of fliers that can move together in outdoor environments, but they were hardly manoeuvrable. Only Dario Floreano, based in Switzerland, has come close to a truly autonomous flock. Others communicated with a central supercomputer that did all their processing for them and gave them precise flight commands. Some, for example, could only fly indoors. In the meantime, his competitors were building their own mechanical flocks but Vicsek says that most of the reported successes have cheated in critical ways. “We could only do experiments in areas without people or animals.” “When they crash, they crash very quickly,” says Vicsek. ![]() The team even had to build their own bespoke electronics lab to make their own copters, since store-bought ones were too unstable and kept on crashing. It took close to five years to solve these problems. They also need time to receive and process those signals, and these lags mean they often get dangerously close to one another or overshoot their mark. The GPS signals that the copters rely on are very noisy, making it hard for them to accurately discern their position. “The big enemies are noise and delay,” says Vicsek. Alignment, attraction and repulsion can keep a virtual flock together, but in the world of wires and rotors, they aren’t enough. And for five years, he has been trying to apply them to actual robots. Vicsek is one of several pioneers of collective motion, who have expanded on these principles over the last few decades. But it also showed scientists that the behaviour of animal collectives could arise from individuals obeying similar simple rules, rather than hewing to some master plan or communicating telepathically. These three simple rules were enough to simulate a realistic bird-like flock.īoids was massively influential for Hollywood animators looking to depict swarms of bats or stampeding wildebeest. They aligned with the average heading of their neighbours they were attracted to each other and they also repulsed each other to keep some personal space. He programmed virtual flying objects-the eponymous Boids-to move according to three simple rules. The copter flock is a real-life version of an influential computer programme called Boids, created by Craig Reynolds in 1986.
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