Luke Bazalgette
Flocking system mimicking fish school behaviours
Thesis Flocking system mimicking fish school behaviours
Abstract
In this thesis, a programmable flocking system was developed. The system is designed to emulate the movement patterns of fish in a body of water. Previous academic research into the field is reviewed and analysed through a critical lens, as a means of informing the design of the software. What follows is an extensive review of the implementation process, providing details on code structure, languages and libraries used to assist development. The resulting simulation is capable of interpreting flock behaviours through the use of a high level scripting environment which can be modified at run time. In order to demonstrate the functionality of the simulation, several scripts were produced. The default script emulates the behaviours of fish when confronted with danger through the formation of a defensive bait ball; the ball alters its shape based on its proximity to a moving point described as a predator. Upon analysing the results of the implementation, a reciprocal velocity based flocking system is proposed and the results of the implementation are presented and discussed.