Agent Behaviors for Joining and Leaving a Flock

Each individual bird in a flock of birds updates its behavior based on the behaviors of its neighbors. Previous work has considered how a small set of algorithmically controlled influencing agents, or robot birds, can influence the flock to behave in a particular way — such as to avoid airports or wind farms. These robot birds are assumed to be seen by the flock as ordinary birds, and hence are able to influence their neighbors. However, we are aware of no previous work that has considered the issues related to robot birds joining and leaving flocks of natural birds. Due to the influence the robot birds have on the flock as soon as members of the flock become neighbors, joining and leaving are not straightforward. In this abstract, we discuss simple approaches for robot birds to use when joining and leaving flocks of natural birds.