Evolving flocking in embodied agents based on local and global application of Reynolds' rules

PLoS One. 2019 Oct 29;14(10):e0224376. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0224376. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

In large scale systems of embodied agents, such as robot swarms, the ability to flock is essential in many tasks. However, the conditions necessary to artificially evolve self-organised flocking behaviours remain unknown. In this paper, we study and demonstrate how evolutionary techniques can be used to synthesise flocking behaviours, in particular, how fitness functions should be designed to evolve high-performing controllers. We start by considering Reynolds' seminal work on flocking, the boids model, and design three components of a fitness function that are directly based on his three local rules to enforce local separation, cohesion and alignment. Results show that embedding Reynolds' rules in the fitness function can lead to the successful evolution of flocking behaviours. However, only local, fragmented flocking behaviours tend to evolve when fitness scores are based on the individuals' conformity to Reynolds' rules. We therefore modify the components of the fitness function so that they consider the entire group of agents simultaneously, and find that the resulting behaviours lead to global flocking. Furthermore, the results show that alignment need not be explicitly rewarded to successfully evolve flocking. Our study thus represents a significant step towards the use of evolutionary techniques to synthesise collective behaviours for tasks in which embodied agents need to move as a single, cohesive group.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Animals
  • Behavior, Animal / physiology*
  • Computer Simulation
  • Models, Biological
  • Social Behavior*
  • Statistics as Topic / methods*

Grants and funding

This work was funded by Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Instituto de Telecomunicações, Embodied Systems for Robotics and Learning at the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), and FCT/MEC through national funds and when applicable co-funded by FEDER – PT2020 partnership agreement under the project UID/EEA/50008/2019. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.