V-like formations in flocks of artificial birds

TL;DR

This paper investigates how simple distributed rules can lead artificial bird flocks to naturally form V-like formations, mirroring those seen in real bird groups, through extensive simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a minimal set of fully distributed rules for artificial birds that reliably produce V-like formations in simulations, advancing understanding of collective flight behavior.

Findings

Artificial birds form V-like patterns under the proposed rules

Simulations show stable formation emergence over many runs

Quantitative indicators correlate with formation stability

Abstract

We consider flocks of artificial birds and study the emergence of V-like formations during flight. We introduce a small set of fully distributed positioning rules to guide the birds' movements and demonstrate, by means of simulations, that they tend to lead to stabilization into several of the well-known V-like formations that have been observed in nature. We also provide quantitative indicators that we believe are closely related to achieving V-like formations, and study their behavior over a large set of independent simulations.