Tracking Footprints in a Swarm: Information-Theoretic and Spatial Centre
of Influence Measures
Abstract
Boids (Bird-oids) is a widely used model to mimic the behaviour of
birds. Shoids (Sheep-oids) rely on the same boids rules with the
addition of a repulsive force away from a sheepdog to model predation
risk in predator-prey dynamic. Previous work assumed homogeneous shoids.
Real-world observations on sheep show non-homogeneous responses to the
presence of a herding agent. We present a portfolio of
information-theoretic and spatial indicators to track the footprints of
shoid with different parameters from the remainder of the shoid flock.
The portfolio is named the Centre of Influence to indicate that the aim
is to identify the influential shoids with the highest impact on flock
dynamics. We use both synthetic simulation-driven data and measurements
collected from actual sheep herding trial by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
(UAV) to validate the proposed measures. The resultant footprints will
allow us in our future research to design more efficient control
strategies for the UAV to improve the herding of sheep, by polarising
the attention of the machine learning algorithm on those Shoids with
influence footprints to drive the flock.