Advertisement
Published in:
2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
3. Simulating Single and Multiple Sheepdogs Guidance of a Sheep Swarm
Authors : Daniel Baxter, Matthew Garratt, Hussein A. Abbass
Published in: Shepherding UxVs for Human-Swarm Teaming
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.
Select sections of text to find matching patents with Artificial Intelligence. powered by
Select sections of text to find additional relevant content using AI-assisted search. powered by
Abstract
Shepherding is a specific class of flocking behaviour where external agents (the shepherd) influence the movements of a group of agents (the flock). In nature, a powerful example is herding a flock of sheep by an influential sheepdog. When the sheepdog encroaches on the sheep’s influence zone, the sheep is essentially “repelled”. Optimising this phenomenon has many engineering applications, such as environmental protection, security, crowd, and agricultural control. In this chapter, we build on Strömbom et al’s adaptive switching algorithm to incorporate multiple sheepdog agents programmed with basic swarm intelligence rules. Our simulation results show that synergising shepherds with swarming behaviours improves the effectiveness of the shepherds as measured by the speed of collecting and driving the sheep towards a target destination while maintaining a more compact and cohesive flock.