Environmental constraints for flocking

• Main Author: Oh, Christina Li Choo
• Other Authors: Ong Yew Soon
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Computing methodologies::Artificial intelligence
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/45002
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Flocks are widely seen in nature and it is the way animals move together as a group. Flock simulation in computer animation has its practical use in crowd simulation and in the entertainment industry. Flocking Animation and Modeling Environment (FAME) is therefore being developed based on Craig Reynolds’ flocking framework, with the aim to help users to simulate flock according to their preferences. Many problems related to flock simulation have been studied and implemented in FAME, such as 3D shape constrained flocking and obstacle avoidance. One area that is lacking is flock simulation that takes into consideration of environmental factors such as water and wind. This dissertation investigates how potential field can be used intuitively to model these environmental conditions that affect flock movement, using simple and inexpensive computation as oppose to complex fluid dynamic simulations. Potential field is also used to implement the escape behavior of the agents.