Ad hoc teamwork refers to the challenge of designing agents that can influence the behavior of a team, without prior coordination with its teammates. This abstract summarizes a portion of our work on influencing a flock of agents to adopt a desired behavior within the context of ad hoc teamwork. We shortly summarize our work on examining how the ad hoc agents should behave in order to orient a ...

We introduce a spatial stochastic process on the lattice Z to model mass extinctions. Each site of the lattice may host a flock of up toN individuals. Each individual may give birth to a new individual at the same site at rate φ until the maximum of N individuals has been reached at the site. Once the flock reaches N individuals then, and only then, it starts giving birth on each of the 2d neig...

Flocking is a emergent behavior exhibited by many different animal species, including birds and fish. In our work we consider adding a small set of influencing agents, that are under our control, into a flock. Following ad hoc teamwork methodology, we assume that we are given knowledge of, but no direct control over, the rest of the flock. In our ongoing work highlighted in this abstract, we ar...

The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate a new algorithm for optimization. The new algorithm is named the Genetic Flock Algorithm. This algorithm is a type of hybrid of a Genetic Algorithm and a Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm. The paper discusses strengths and weaknesses of these two algorithms. It then explains how the Genetic Flock Algorithm combines features of both and g...

This trial examined the effect of 2 turkey breeder hen ages (33 or 55 wk of age) on performance, intestinal histology, and inflammatory immune response of female turkey poults grown to market weight. Using a randomized design, female poults were separated by breeder flock age (n = 8 floor pens/breeder flock age; n = 26 poults/pen; 0.195 m(2)/bird), fed identical commercial diets (9 phases), and...

SUMMARY Uruguay's national sheep performance recording scheme (Flock-Testing Se 1 described. Recent developments of the scheme are discussed. The sChemery,~ plemented and supervised by the Uruguayan Wool Secretariat (SUL). Cent S of responsabilities by SUL and continued co-participation of breeders a~11a tists are identified as the main factors contributing to the scheme's s ~ is suggested that...

In this paper, we present a flocking model where agents are equipped with navigational and obstacle avoidance capabilities that conform to user defined paths and formation shape requirements. In particular, we adopt an agent-based paradigm to achieve flexible formation handling at both the individual and flock level. The proposed model is studied under three different scenarios where flexible f...

Vaccination of your lambs and ewes is one of the more common, yet least understood health management practices performed by Michigan sheep producers each year. In talking with producers it is obvious that some producers vaccinate their flock for “everything”, while others choose a more conservative approach to immunology. However, regardless of your conservative or radical approach to vaccinati...

Abstract. We study the linear stability of flock and mill ring solutions of two individual based models for biological swarming. The individuals interact via a nonlocal interaction potential that is repulsive in the short range and attractive in the long range. We relate the instability of the flock rings with the instability of the ring solution of the first order model. We observe that repuls...