Boids

Maybe, but a simulation is only as good as its model. If this model of boids does not have the same properties as the pandemic, the simulation is probably not good enough.

For a nice visualization and simulation of a spreading virus and why social distancing is a good idea: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-si...

Re: Boids

#5

Post by qubex » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:04 AM UTC

jsilence wrote: post #3

Could that be used to simulate the pandemic?

No, definitely not: ‘boids’ serve to show how synchronised collective behaviour can arise in swarms of agents that can observe only a handful of their closest neighbours whilst following pre-determined rules. Virii have no such perceptive capability.

S-I-R (Susceptible, Infected, Recovered/Removed) models of epidemiology are a far better place to begin for reasonably realistic and tractable modelling and prediction of epidemics.

Re: Boids

#6

Post by qubex » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:08 AM UTC

I recommend one of my favourite books, Gary William Flake’s 1998 The Computational Beauty of Nature to anybody interested in boids or other computational models of social, chemical, and physical phenomena.

Therein the author covers boids extensively and in detail. If I am not mistaken it is in section 16.3 that the author treats boids fairly extensively.

Re: Boids

#7

Post by matsemann » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:10 AM UTC

I have an implementation here [0] if people want to play with it. Supports dynamically changing the controls, has obstacles and predators. Setting weights for separation, alignment and cohesion to zero and then increasing only one of them nicely shows which role each of them plays. It's actually made as a workshop [1] for my company, where the shell is provided and one has to implement it step by step. In Norwegian, though.

Update: Dang linked other discussions, and I see I commented on one from 2015 [2]. Someone there asked for the course content, and that's available (in English!) in a PDF in [1]. This workshop/implementation is actually an example of what I wanted the students to make at the time. Which I then retrofitted to a fun workshop for my colleagues.

[0]: https://matsemann.github.io/boids-workshop/ [1]: https://github.com/Matsemann/boids-workshop [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300142

Re: Boids

#8

Post by jonbaer » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:25 AM UTC

Boids in 3D Unity: https://github.com/SebLague/Boids and the excellent related video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtqltqcQhw

Re: Boids

#9

Post by jonbaer » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:31 AM UTC

jsilence wrote: post #3

Could that be used to simulate the pandemic?

I think (maybe) a better question might be if a boids strategy could somehow be used to avoid a pandemic(?) - if all information is known. Seems like we are all performing a 6ft. collision detection @ the moment.

Re: Boids

#10

Post by mehmetoguzderin » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:33 AM UTC

WGSL [0] implementation of Boids: https://dawn.googlesource.com/tint/+/refs/heads/master/test/...

[0]: http://gpuweb.github.io/gpuweb/wgsl