Boids

What are Boids?

"Boids" is an artificial life simulation originally created by Craig Reynolds (cs.stanford.edu, n.d), designed to imitate the flocking behaviour exhibited by birds. Boid behaviour is governed by three mathematical principles.

These are as follows (Ben Eater, n. d):

Cohesion: Each boid flies towards other boids, gradually steering towards the average position of its neighbours.
Separation: Each boid tries to avoid running into other boids. If it gets too close to another, it'll steer away.
Alignment: Each boid tries to match the speed and direction of the other boids around it.

Examples

Here are some examples from my implementation. If you'd like to learn more about boids, look at Sebastian Lague's video about them on YouTube. I've added all of the websites, YouTube videos, and scientific papers I used to create Boids in the references section if you're interested.

[Above] Boids abide by three rules: separation, alignment, and cohesion.

[Above] As you can see, the boids aren't in one large group. This is because each of them has a view radius.

Running This Implementation of Boids

You can simply download this repository as a .ZIP file and open index.html in your preferred browser.

However, when this is run directly, issues sometimes occur. I would recommend running this simulation using the following steps. Firstly, clone the repository and navigate to the root directory by running:

git clone https://github.com/matthewflegg/boids-improved.git
cd boids-improved

Then, if you have Python installed, run the following command. This will serve the HTML file locally using Python's built in HTTP server.

pushd index.html
python3 -m http.server 9999
popd
<browser> 0.0.0.0:9999  # Replace <browser> with your browser. For instance, `google-chrome`, or `firefox`.

If you do not have Python installed, run either of the following commands, depending on your browser. If you use a different one than what's listed below, try and type its name in the same format:

google-chrome index.html  # For Chrome users.
firefox index.html         # For Firefox users.
<browser> index.html      # Replace <browser> with your browser.

Am I Going To Develop This Further?

Yes, of course! I'd really like to write some GLSL shaders as p5.js offers support for them via their WEBGL Rendering Context.

References

cs.stanford.edu. (n.d.). Boids. [online] Available at: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2008-09/modeling-natural-systems/boids.html.

‌Ben Eater. (n.d.). Boids algorithm. [online] Available at: https://eater.net/boids.

Sebastian Lague. (n.d.). Coding Adventure: Boids. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtqltqcQhw [Accessed 21 May 2022].

Sergio Abreu. (n.d.). Boids - The Emergence of Flocks. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXQCasmBhY4&t=247s [Accessed 21 May 2022].

dante. (n.d.). How do Boids Work? A Flocking Simulation. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbUPfMXXQIY&t=101s [Accessed 21 May 2022].

http://www.cs.cmu.edu (2010). Flocking and Steering Behaviors. [online] Available at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15462-s10/www/lec-slides/Lecture24_flocking.pdf [Accessed 21 May 2022].