Welcome,

Craig Reynolds first compiled the classics flocking algorithm in 1986 in a project simulating the way that birds and other flocking, herding and schooling animals behave. He called his computer-simulated agents Boids - a contraction of birds and droids. Flocking continues to be an evocative example of emergence, where complex global behaviour can arise from the interaction of simple local rules.

In flocking models, a boid reacts only to flock mates within a certain neighbourhood around itself; there is no global steering intelligence. The neighbourhood is defined by a distance from the centre of the boids and an angle around it, measured from its direction of travel. The ‘centre mass’ is the average position of all the agents.

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