kpc00@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (kpc) (10/27/90)
I am very interested in the reasoning here. Any comments? Followups are redirected to c.a.p. In article <1990Oct25.100748.2501@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> mccool@dgp.toronto.edu (Michael McCool) writes: >>It is really an interesting question of whether birds (in flight) >>show intelligent behaviour or are just purely constrained by the >>physical laws of flight (wind streams etc). >>Any comments ? You might want to check out the work done in graphics on the animation of flocks, herd, schools (of fish), and other collective motion. I don't have any references handy, but you can ask a friendly neighbourhood graphics type or look through the last few years of Computer Graphics (the proceedings of the SIGGRAPH conference published in journal form). There is also an nice animation, whose name escapes me (BOY, I'm a LOT of help, aren't I?) which animated fish & birds. I seem to recall windstream has nothing to do with it; the ====== From the simulations? (Underscoring is mine.) collective behaviour is a result of the birds desire to "remain ================= together" balanced against a desire to avoid collision with each ======== ========================= other and objects. And of course, at least in the case of birds, a minimum speed may be necessary to remain airborne (ignoring hovering and soaring). Collective "goal-directed" behaviour, i.e. following a general path or going towards a point (tropism) is also a factor. I don't mean this as a rhetorical device; just as a question: what kinds of reasoning did you use here, and what are the names for the elements of reasoning involved? (For example, had you made an inference something like the following? 1 A is the reason for B B is like C (it was made for the sake of being like C) There is probably a reason, of the same sort as A, for C implies 2 A is, or is probably, the reason for C ?) This doesn't necessarily map onto the above example, but did 1 seeing that an algorithm based on simulation of what, if it were human agents instead of graphical objects, would be desires and goals, simulates a flock of birds's salient group behavior fairly well lead you to believe that 2 birds have these desires or analogues or homologues of these desires or perhaps instead that 2 avoidance and cohesion strategies is the best, or a very good, way to describe the flock's behavior as an entity ? I really don't mean this as criticism at all; I am just wondering how the inference went. Anyhow, good luck. Michael McCool@dgp.toronto.edu Yes, good luck. -- If you do not receive a reply from me, please resend your mail; occasionally this site's mail gets delayed. Neither representing any company nor, necessarily, myself.