From: William Rutiser <wruyahoo05@...>
Date: 2010-02-09T22:52:46+09:00
Subject: Re: It's a Bird, it's a plane, no! umm, it's Super Boid?

thunk wrote:
> Hey Guys,
>
> I have something actually working that seems allot like Swarm
> Technology to me.   The system features many smaller parts that seem
> allot like "Boids" (or "Agents").
>
> I'd be tempted to call them "Dorts" because they get thrown straight
> at the target and fire on my machine at about 2,000 per second (in
> 1.9).  Not very "natural" - one would not want to have mosquitoes able
> to do that :)
>
> There's no "in-flight" communication between the Boids - their life
> cycle involves trying to attain values for a list of required
> attributes and a docking with a "HelperClass" (see Ruleby also) for
> any in-depth calculations.  They make their assertions, record all the
> results, and wait to be debriefed after they have landed.
>
> So are these things Boids or not?
>
> For example:
>
> They are fired sequentially so they are not buzzing around sending
> signals to each other.
>
> However, if a Boid is assigned a lower pass number it can "leave
> information" for a Boids fired on later passes - so there is
> inter_boidal_communications :) - but only after their "flight" /
> period of activity.
>
>
> It's taken me almost 3 years to get this all this far along  Right
> now, however, I can go on localhost  and author 10 new real almost
> guaranteed to work "Boids" easily in an hour.(When I started and did
> these by hand they could take a full day.)   Mostly all I have to do
> now
> is make  multiple choices.  (Lots of Ruby reflection at work!)
>
> I'm guessing that most you folks here are actively developing Web
> applications these days?
>
> Does anybody here happen to follow "Swarm Intelligence"?
>
> Anyway, the power of this technique just seems to keep revealing
> itself more and more.   For example, the system now supports "multi-
> pass" so that pass 1 Boids can do things based on pass 0 Boids which
> is defined as "System".  For another example, the Boids can be
> promoted or demoted based on some statistical work we do (related to
> their category distribution).
>
> The whole power of all this hits me between my eyes when I make
> changes to the UrBoid - the grand-daddy of all the Boids - a few line
> changes here and 100s, someday maybe 10,000s of these things can be
> taught new behavior.  Fun stuff!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Thunk
>   

Interesting. Do you have an application in mind for this or is it just 
for fun?

For other readers, the Wikipedia entry for "boid" may provide an 
explanation of of this general subject.

-- Bill